Australia is one of 53 countries that make up the Commonwealth of Nations. Latvia can also be a member of the Commonwealth and access the resources available to all members as well as participate in the Commonwealth Games second only to the Olympic Games.

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Canada and Australia are Commonwealth members with values that enabled the acceptance of the most amount of Latvians fleeing waring Europe. A Canadian citizen has held the Latvian Presidency for 8 years and Latvians enjoy visa free travel to Canada.

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Trinidad and Tobago are Commonwealth members and were once a colony of Courlanders of Latvia.

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There are no Commonwealth members in the Baltic Sea Region or on Mainland Europe and this would enable Latvia to have another differentiator in the region and Europe that would contribute towards an economic competitive advantage.

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Currently Cyprus, Malta and the United Kingdom are the only three members of the Commonwealth of Nations within the EU.

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Australia has over 20,000 citizens with Latvian heritage but only 50 Australians of any heritage live in Latvia. Latvia joining the Commonwealth would lift the profile of Latvia with Australians.

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History

Origins

Although performing a vastly different function, the Commonwealth is the successor of the British Empire. In 1884, whilst visiting Adelaide, South Australia, Lord Rosebery described the changing British Empire, as some of its colonies became more independent, as a "Commonwealth of Nations".

Conferences of British and colonial Prime Ministers had occurred periodically since 1887, leading to the creation of the Imperial Conferences in the late 1920s.^[3] The formal organisation of the Commonwealth developed from the Imperial Conferences, 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 Britain and its dominions agreed they were "equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by common allegiance to the Crown, 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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Remaining members gain independence

After World War II, the Empire was gradually dismantled, partly owing to the rise of independence movements in the then-subject territories (such as that started in India under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Muhammad Ali Jinnah), and partly owing to the British Government's strained circumstances resulting from the cost of the war. The word "British" was dropped in 1949 from the title of the Commonwealth to reflect the changing position.^[4] Myanmar (formerly Burma, 1948), and Aden (1967) are the only former colonies not to have joined the Commonwealth upon post-war independence. Among the former protectorates and mandates, Egypt (independent in 1922), Iraq (1932), Transjordan (1946), Palestine (became in part, the state of Israel in 1948), Sudan (1956), Kuwait (1961), Bahrain (1971), Oman (1971), Qatar (1971), and the United Arab Emirates (1971) never became members of the Commonwealth. The Republic of Ireland left the Commonwealth upon becoming a republic in 1949. However, the Ireland Act 1949 passed by the Parliament of Westminster gave citizens of the Republic of Ireland a status similar to that of other citizens of the Commonwealth in UK law.

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Members not under the House of Windsor

The issue of countries with constitutional structures that did not operate based on the shared Crown, but who wished to remain members of the Commonwealth, was resolved in April 1949 at a Commonwealth prime ministers' meeting in London. Under the London Declaration, India agreed that when it became a republic in January 1950 it would accept the King as "symbol of the free association of its independent member nations and as such Head of the Commonwealth". The other Commonwealth countries in turn recognised India's continuing membership of the association. (At Pakistan’s insistence, India was not regarded as an exceptional case and it was assumed that other states would be accorded the same treatment as India.) The London Declaration is often seen as marking the beginning of the modern Commonwealth, and following India's precedent, other nations moved to become republics, or constitutional monarchies under a different Royal House.

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Old, New and White Commonwealth

As the Commonwealth grew, Britain and pre-1945 Dominions (a term formally dropped in the 1940s) became informally known as the "Old Commonwealth", particularly since the 1960s when some of them disagreed with poorer, African and Asian (or New Commonwealth) members about various issues at Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings. Accusations that the old, "White" Commonwealth had different interests from African Commonwealth nations in particular, and charges of racism and colonialism arose during heated debates about Rhodesia in the 1960s and 1970s, the imposition of sanctions against apartheid-era South Africa in the 1980s and, more recently, about whether to press for democratic reforms in Nigeria and then Zimbabwe.^{[citation needed]} The term New Commonwealth is also used in the United Kingdom (especially in the 1960s and 1970s) to refer to recently decolonised countries, which are predominantly non-white and underdeveloped. It was often used in debates about immigration from these countries.^{[citation needed]}

In recent years, the term "White Commonwealth" has been used in a derogatory sense to imply that the wealthier, white nations of the Commonwealth had different interests and goals from the non-white, and particularly the African members. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has used the term frequently to allege that the Commonwealth's attempts to force political changes in his country is motivated by racism and colonialist attitudes and that the White Commonwealth dominates the Commonwealth of Nations as a whole.^{[citation needed]}

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Membership

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Membership criteria

Main article: Commonwealth of Nations membership criteria

The criteria for membership of the Commonwealth of Nations have developed over time from a series of separate documents. The Statute of Westminster 1931, as the fundamental founding document of the organisation, laid out that membership required dominionhood. The 1949 London Declaration ended this, allowing republican and indigenous monarchic members on the condition that they recognised the British monarch as the 'Head of the Commonwealth'.^[5] In the wake of the wave of decolonisation in the 1960s, these constitutional principles were augmented by political, economic, and social principles. The first of these was set out in 1961, when it was decided that respect for racial equality would be a requisite of membership, leading directly to the withdrawal of South Africa's re-application (which they were required to make under the formula of the London Declaration upon becoming a republic). The fourteen points of the 1971 Singapore Declaration dedicated all members to the principles of world peace, liberty, human rights, equality, and free trade.^[2]

These criteria were unenforceable for two decades,^[6] until, in 1991, the Harare Declaration was issued, dedicating the leaders to applying the Singapore principles to the completion of decolonisation, the end of the Cold War, and the fall of Apartheid in South Africa.^[7] The mechanisms by which these principles would be applied were created, and the manner clarified, by the 1995 Millbrook Commonwealth Action Programme, which created the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG), which has the power to rule on whether members meet the requirements for membership under the Harare Declaration.^[8] Also in 1995, an Inter-Governmental Group was created to finalise and codify the full requirements for membership. Upon reporting in 1997, as adopted under the Edinburgh Declaration, the Inter-Governmental Group ruled that any future members would have to have a direct constitutional link with an existing member.^[9]

In addition to this new rule, the former rules were consolidated into a single document. These requirements, which remain the same today, are that members must:

• accept and comply with the Harare principles.
• be fully sovereign states.
• recognise the monarch of the Commonwealth realms as the Head of the Commonwealth.
• accept the English language as the means of Commonwealth communication.
• respect the wishes of the general population vis-à-vis Commonwealth membership.^[9]

These requirements are undergoing review, and a report on potential amendment is to be presented to the 2007 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.