The Commonwealth

The Commonwealth of Nations is a voluntary association of 54 sovereign states. Most of them were British colonies or dependencies of those colonies.No one government in the Commonwealth exercises power over the others, as is the case in a political union. Rather, the Commonwealth is an international organization in which countries with diverse social, political, and economic backgrounds are regarded as equal in status, and cooperate within a framework of common values and goals, as outlined in the Singapore Declaration issued in 1971.