Commonwealth Day 2022 : The Commonwealth as an Organisation Today
The Commonwealth which emerged from the British empire has been in almost every respect its opposite: a loose and voluntary association of equal sovereign states sharing common values and co-operating for the common good. The process has not been without its problems, and the Commonwealth continues to wrestle with the legacies of empire (Murphy, 2011), but the twenty-first-century Commonwealth is a vehicle for post-colonial aspirations (Drayton, 2016). On a political level the intergovernmental Commonwealth’s finest hour was probably in the fight against apartheid in South Africa and the white settler regime in Rhodesia (Evans, 2017). Shared political values remain central to the Commonwealth, most notably expressed in the Commonwealth Charter (Kirby, 2020). For its supporters, it is the Commonwealth’s less high-profile activities and its wealth of non-governmental as well as intergovernmental connections which make it a forward-looking organisation (Howell, 2011). A ‘Commonwealth effect’ in trade is fairly well documented (Bennett and Sriskandarajah, 2011). Much Commonwealth activity is focused around mutual aid and sharing of best practice in development, including health and education (Lewin, 2019). The Commonwealth has also added important strands to climate diplomacy (Gomez, 2021), and its networks play an important role in the struggle for media freedom (Page and Horsley, 2018). The multi-faith Commonwealth Day observance is a celebration of the modern Commonwealth’s vibrant unity-in-diversity (Simpson, 1997).