England (Commonwealth Union)_ Following the recently concluded Commonwealth Secretariat visit to Zimbabwe, Assistant Secretary-General Prof. Luis Franceschi made the following statement. “Zimbabwe has made significant progress in its journey to re-join the Commonwealth family. This is encouraging and we hope that further progress will be made,” he said. “This mission by the Commonwealth forms part of the broader membership process and we look forward to advancing this further.”
According to him, all the parties with whom the mission has engaged, including the government, opposition parties, civil society organizations, religious leaders, and Zimbabwe citizens, support the country’s return to the Commonwealth family. He further added that the mission will collaborate towards this shared objective to guarantee that this process concludes properly. Last week, the Commonwealth Secretariat finalized a group, led by Prof. Franceschi, to visit Harare, Zimbabwe.
The visit of the mission is one of the informal evaluation procedures surrounding Zimbabwe’s appeal to rejoin the Commonwealth. The procedures regarding re-admission require numerous stringent activities that all nations desiring to join the Commonwealth family must complete, including a commitment to the Commonwealth Charter’s ideals. The mission met with His Excellency the President of Zimbabwe, government leaders and higher officials, opposition political party members, leaders of diplomatic missions in Harare, and civil society organizations, including the Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network (ZESN) and the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association (ZWLA), as well as media and business enterprises. An appeal to join the Commonwealth does not have a strict time limit, but is customized to the circumstances of each candidate.
The Commonwealth is a voluntary organization of 56 equal and autonomous nations. The family houses 2.5 billion individuals and comprises both developed and developing nations. There are 32 minor governments among the membership, including several island nations. The member states have agreed upon common objectives such as development, democracy, and peace. The association’s ideas and morals are articulated in the Commonwealth Charter. All nations are free to join the modern Commonwealth family. Gabon and Togo were the two latest countries that entered the Commonwealth in 2022.
