Member states of the Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations is a voluntary association of 56 sovereign states, referred to as Commonwealth countries. Most of them were British colonies or dependencies of those colonies.
No government in the Commonwealth exercises power over the others, as is the case in a political union. Rather, the Commonwealth is an international organisation 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. Such common values and goals include the promotion of democracy, human rights, good governance, the rule of law, civil liberties, equality before the law, free trade, multilateralism, and world peace, which are promoted through multilateral projects and meetings, such as the Commonwealth Games, held once every four years.
The symbol of this free association is the Head of the Commonwealth, currently King Charles III. All heads of the Commonwealth to date have been monarchs of the United Kingdom. The office of Head of the Commonwealth does not imbue the holder with any political or executive power over any Commonwealth member states; the position is purely symbolic and titular, and it is the Commonwealth Secretary-General who is the chief executive of the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth was first officially formed in 1926 when the Balfour Declaration of the Imperial Conference recognised the full sovereignty of Dominions. Known as the British Commonwealth of Nations, the original and therefore earliest members were Australia, Canada, the Irish Free State, Newfoundland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. It was re-stated by the 1930 conference and incorporated in the Statute of Westminster the following year. In 1949, the London Declaration marked the birth of the modern Commonwealth and the adoption of its present name. The members have a combined population of 2.6 billion, almost a third of the world's population, of whom 1.419 billion live in India, and 95% live in Africa and Asia combined.
The most recent members to join were the Francophone African nations of Gabon and Togo on 29 June 2022, who along with Mozambique and Rwanda, are unusual in not having a historical constitutional relationship with the United Kingdom or other Commonwealth states.
, fifteen of the member states are Commonwealth realms, with the Head of the Commonwealth as their heads of state, five others are monarchies with their own individual monarchs, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malaysia, and Tonga ), and the rest are republics.
The Republic of Ireland and Zimbabwe are former members of the Commonwealth. Zimbabwe is in the process of trying to return to its membership of the Commonwealth since Emmerson Mnangagwa became President of Zimbabwe when Robert Mugabe was overthrown in the 2017 Zimbabwean coup d'etat.
Current member states
All dates below are provided by the Commonwealth of Nations Secretariat members list, and population figures are as of 1 February 2020.| Country | First joined | UN continental region | UN geographical subregion | Population | System of government | Notes | |||||||||||||||||||||
 Antigua and BarbudaFormer member states
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Ireland
Burundi
Algeria