Latest content: Social development

Commonwealth Health Ministers will gather for their annual meeting in Geneva on 21 May 2017, on the eve of the 70th World Health Assembly.

It is a great pleasure to have been able to come to Lesotho and Malawi for my first significant visit to Southern Africa. Malawi has been an extraordinary opportunity for us to look and see what we’re doing in relation to ending early marriage, and also what we are doing to attack anti-corruption.

The Commonwealth will highlight the links between health and global security in a policy paper that outlines the role of health protection in addressing violence and achieving security.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland has met with the Malaysian minister for human resources, Dato’ Sri Richard Rio.

The final hundred-day countdown for the first Commonwealth Youth Games to be held in the Caribbean has begun.

Corruption in elite sport undermines grassroots efforts to transform lives and livelihoods, argued experts during the Second Commonwealth Debate on Sport and Sustainable Development.

Protecting green spaces in towns and cities, ring-fencing school budgets for physical education, and empowering women and girls through sport, are among a set of policy prescriptions set out in a report on global goals published today.

The Caribbean and Africa will be the first to benefit from action to get more women into political leadership, the Commonwealth Secretariat has announced.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland and Secretary-General Designate Dr Joanna Newman, of the Association of Commonwealth Universities met on International Women’s Day todiscuss how their two organisations could work even more closely together.

A leading international academic on the prevention of violence says the Commonwealth is uniquely placed to take forward cross-sector policy interventions that could protect millions of lives.

Canadian television station TVO yesterday broadcast a special edition of its flagship talk show, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, focused on the Commonwealth of Nations: its purpose, past and future.

Education ministers have approved plans to scale-up and mobilise resources in the Commonwealth.

Schoolchildren between 7 and 14 years of age from Cyprus, India, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and the UK have been named as winners of the Commonwealth Class Writing Competition, an initiative of the Commonwealth Secretariat and British Council.

Sri Lanka’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mangala Samaraweera has expressed hope that the Commonwealth will continue to fight for the values that have strengthened Sri Lanka in recent times, such as human rights, rule of law and democracy.

The Commonwealth’s Head of Climate Finance and Small States, Denny Lewis-Bynoe, explains why 2016 marked a turning point in the global battle against climate change, and why it is crucial that the world builds upon this momentum in 2017.
2016 was a pivotal year for climate change.

Enala Ngulu lives in Karonga, in rural Malawi. She lost both her parents when she was only eight years old. At the age of 13 she was married to a man of 47. He had two other wives. At a time when she should have been in school, learning about the world and how to make a contribution as a young woman, she was forced to grapple with adult responsibilities such as a marriage, a household and child-bearing.

Advancing youth entrepreneurship is a major priority for the Commonwealth, writes Melissa Bryant, Assistant Communications Officer at the Commonwealth Secretariat

The Commonwealth is holding an event at its headquarters in London today to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Called Empowering girls and women: The role of health and education in eliminating violence against women, it has a special focus on the abandonment of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

A campaign to recognise those persecuted or killed in acts of religious hatred saw both sides of the frontage of the UK Houses of Parliament illuminated in red this week.