British Commonwealth
Written by Deviana Wijaya
Who doesn’t know about England? England is one of the biggest countries which give a lot of contributions to the world. In fact, the nation’s commonwealth is an intergovernmental association of England Empire. There are 53 states under this organization and mostly had been colonized by England. The states join the commonwealth voluntarily and they may resign without any obligations or consequences. This commonwealth is made in order to unite those countries and became official in 1920s by the Empire Conference. All of the states assume Queen Elizabeth II as the head of commonwealth. However, there are only 16 states of commonwealth which assume her as their monarch. The other 32 states are republic countries and the other 5 have a different monarch.
Among those states, there are 2 states that have never been colonized by England and they decided to join the commonwealth, they are Mozambique and Rwanda. As the countries that have never been colonized by England, they have to fulfill some requirements; they have to admit Queen Elizabeth II as the head of commonwealth, free market policies, racial equality, human rights freedom, uphold peace, admit English as their main language, and every citizens has the willingness to join the commonwealth.
The purpose of commonwealth is to create a unity and tight relationship with every rich and poor state also in every religion, therefore, there is peace. Basically, the commonwealth can be a network for every developed country to be acknowledged by the successful countries. The states hope their opinions can be acknowledged by the commonwealth, so, the improvements can happen and make them to be successful countries. Unfortunately, it is known that until now, their rights to give an opinion and voice are still hard to obtain. The states become dependence to the commonwealth. However, all of the decisions are decided by the Queen and it is tend to be inviolable.
Nowadays commonwealth is seen as a political community. By the political, it can be mean a country which based on constitution, democratic countries, federation countries, republic countries, or independent countries. Political system in England is a democracy with parliamentary system which embraces liberalism and prioritizing the individual freedom. Basically, it can be seen from its governmental system which has a big influence and wide knowledge towards the parliamentary government. Therefore, they are called as The Mother of Parliaments.
As for its vision and mission, commonwealth is actualizing the improvement and prosperity for its members of states in Democracy and Building Consensus, economic development, education, ecosystem, gender equality, peace, health, Human Resources development, human rights, sports, and the development of the young generations. This can be happened by holding the fundamental value in political democracy. The Secretariat of Commonwealth has planned to keep focusing on the whole strategy, as for the expected purpose and result from the organization. The plans are ‘Peace and Democracy’ and ‘Pro-Poor Growth and Sustainable Development’. Those are basically different plans with the same main purpose. The prospect for the future of the commonwealth is to increase the number of successful country that can move forward and cooperate with England also with the other successful countries.