The 2022 edition of the Commonwealth Games – Birmingham came to an end. Australia is to host the next edition of the Commonwealth Games in 2026.
About the Commonwealth Games –
- The Commonwealth Games is an international, multi-sport event involving athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations.
- The first official Commonwealth Games (called the British Empire Games) were held in 1930 in Canada.
- Since 1930, the Games have taken place every four years, except in 1942 and 1946 (due to World War II).
- India hosted the game in 2010.
Commonwealth of Nations –
- The Commonwealth of Nations is an association of independent sovereign states, most of which are former colonies (Rwanda, Gabon, Togo and Mozambique, are exceptions) once governed by the United Kingdom as part of the British Empire.
- It was once known as the British Commonwealth (or British Commonwealth of Nations), and many still call it by that name, either for historical reasons or to distinguish it from the many other commonwealths around the world.
- The Queen of the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II, is the Head of the Commonwealth; this title, however, does not imply any political power over member nations.
- The Commonwealth is primarily an organisation in which countries with diverse economic backgrounds have an opportunity for close and equal interaction.
- The primary activities of the Commonwealth are designed to create an atmosphere of economic cooperation between member nations, as well as the promotion of democracy and good governance in them.
- The Commonwealth is not a political union of any sort, and does not allow the United Kingdom to exercise any power over the affairs of the organisation’s other members.
- While some nations of the Commonwealth, known as Commonwealth Realms, recognise the British Monarch as their head of state (and thus in theory still have some limited political ties to London), the majority do not.
Background –
- The Commonwealth is the successor of the British Empire; in 1884, while visiting Adelaide, South Australia, Lord Rosebery had described the changing British Empire, as its former colonies became more independent, as a “Commonwealth of Nations”.
- The formal organisation of the Commonwealth has its origins in the Imperial Conferences of the late 1920s (conferences of British and colonial prime ministers had occurred periodically since 1887), where the independence of the self-governing colonies and especially of dominions was recognised, particularly in the Balfour Declaration at the Imperial Conference in 1926, when the United Kingdom and its dominions agreed they were “equal in status and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations”.
- This relationship was eventually formalised by the Statute of Westminster in 1931.
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