Commonwealth Day occurs each year on the second Monday of March.

The Commonwealth is a legacy of the British Empire; most of the original colonies have become republics (with their own head of state), and a handful of countries in the Commonwealth have monarchs from different royal houses. Currently, the Head of the Commonwealth is Queen Elizabeth II, and this is her sixty-first year in office (her reign began in February, 1952). Elizabeth II is also the monarch of sixteen Commonwealth members, known as the Commonwealth realms (Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, Realm of New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and the United Kingdom).

The members of the Commonwealth sustain and encourage the values as laid out in the Singapore Declaration of 1971 (democracy, human rights, good governance, individual liberty, egalitarianism, free trade, multilateralism, and world peace).

Happy Commonwealth Day!