" As a result of subsequent nationality laws, this provision does not apply to naturalised citizens in any Commonwealth Realm.

Grenada is an independent country and Commonwealth Realm.

Jamaica is an independent country and Commonwealth Realm.

* 1991 – Elizabeth II, in her capacity as Queen of Australia, signs letters patent allowing Australia to become the first Commonwealth Realm to institute its own separate Victoria Cross award in its own honours system.

Papua New Guinea is an independent country and Commonwealth Realm.

The politics of Saint Kitts and Nevis takes place in the framework of an independent federal parliamentary democratic Commonwealth Realm with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state, represented in St. Kitts and Nevis by a governor-general.

Politics of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines takes place in the framework of an independent parliamentary democratic Commonwealth Realm with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state, represented by a Governor General, who acts on the advice of the prime minister and the cabinet.

Solomon Islands is an independent country and Commonwealth Realm.

The foreign relations of Australia have spanned from the country's time as Dominion and later Realm of the Commonwealth to become steadfastly allied with New Zealand through long-standing ANZAC ties dating back to the early 1900s, and the United States throughout the Cold War, to its engagement with Asia as a power in its own right.

The country is a sovereign parliamentary democracy and a Commonwealth Realm.

It gained independence from the United Kingdom as a Commonwealth Realm on 9 December 1961, becoming a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations exactly a year later on 9 December 1962.

Following India's assumption of a republican status, it was agreed by Commonwealth leaders that being a Republic was not incompatible with membership, but that a Commonwealth Realm would have to reapply for Commonwealth membership if it became a Republic.

The Union of South Africa was a Commonwealth Realm in which Queen Elizabeth II was given the title Queen of South Africa, although she never visited the country in that capacity.

: Whereas it has pleased Almighty God to call to His Mercy our late Sovereign Lord King George the Sixth of Blessed and Glorious memory, by whose Decease the Crown is solely and rightfully come to the High and Mighty Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary: WE, therefore, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of this Realm, being here assisted with these His late Majesty's Privy Council, with representatives of other Members of the Commonwealth, with other Principal Gentlemen of Quality, with the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of London, do now hereby with one voice and Consent of Tongue and Heart publish and proclaim that the High and Mighty Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary is now, by the death of our late Sovereign of happy memory, become Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God Queen of this Realm and of all Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, to whom Her lieges do acknowledge all Faith and constant Obedience with hearty and humble Affection, beseeching God by whom Kings and Queens do reign, to bless the Royal Princess Elizabeth the Second with long and happy Years to reign over us.

As a Commonwealth Realm, Fiji's Head of State was the Queen of Fiji, Elizabeth II.

On 13 December 1974, the constitution of Malta was substantially revised, transforming the former British colony from a Commonwealth Realm into a republic within the Commonwealth.

For the most part however, Armenia is considered one of the more pro-democratic nations in the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Along with the Bill of Rights 1689, it remains today one of the main constitutional laws governing the succession to not only the throne of the United Kingdom, but, following British colonialism, the resultant doctrine of reception, and independence, also to those of the other Commonwealth realms, whether by willing deference to the act as a British statute or as a patriated part of the particular realm's constitution.

As with the EU, one holds Commonwealth citizenship only by being a citizen of a Commonwealth member state.

Of these, sixteen were held in London, reflecting then-prevailing views of the Commonwealth as the continuation of the Empire and the centralisation of power in the British Commonwealth Office ( the one meeting outside London, in Lagos, was an extraordinary meeting held in January 1966 to coordinate policies towards Rhodesia ).

Four are elected by the Town and one is appointed by the Commonwealth Commissioner of Community Affairs.

This is because ambassadors are exchanged between foreign countries, but since the beginning of the Commonwealth, member countries have nominally maintained that they are not foreign to one another ( the same reason as the naming of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office ).

Two decades earlier the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 had stated that the United Kingdom and the dominions 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 ".

The Commonwealth also had larger subdivisions known as prowincja, one of which was named Greater Poland.

Examples include Commonwealth realms where the individual who acts as their respective monarch resides in the oldest realm, the United Kingdom, and so is represented in the others by an appointed governor-general ( unhyphenated in Canada as governor general ) and Andorra which is headed by two non-resident co-princes, one of which is also the President of France.

In the second half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century, the Polish – Lithuanian Commonwealth was a huge state in central-eastern Europe, with an area approaching one million square kilometers.

From the 1950s onwards London became home to a large number of immigrants, largely from Commonwealth countries such as Jamaica, India, Bangladesh Pakistan, which dramatically changed the face of London, turning it into one of the most diverse cities in Europe.

* 1971 – The Singapore Declaration, one of the two most important documents to the uncodified constitution of the Commonwealth of Nations, is issued.

In English, the pronunciation is the more common one in the UK and Commonwealth.

The 1928 Members ' stand, the 1956 Olympic stand and the 1968 Ponsford stand were demolished one by one between late 2003 to 2005, and replaced with a new structure in time for the 2006 Commonwealth Games.

The Northern Mariana Islands, officially the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands ( CNMI ), is one of the two insular area Commonwealths of the United States of America, the other being Puerto Rico.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, in particular at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire was one of the most powerful states in the world – a multinational, multilingual empire that stretched from the southern borders of the Holy Roman Empire to the outskirts of Vienna, Royal Hungary ( modern Slovakia ) and the Polish – Lithuanian Commonwealth in the north to Yemen and Eritrea in the south ; from Algeria in the west to Azerbaijan in the east ; controlling much of southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa.

In December, one week after the Ukrainian Republic approved independence by referendum, Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus met to form the Commonwealth of Independent States ( CIS ).

Less than one year after independence, on 5 June 1977, with James Mancham in London to attend the Commonwealth Conference, Rene's supporters staged a blood-less coup and installed Rene as President.

The staging of the 2006 Commonwealth Games, generally viewed as a success ( albeit an expensive one ), was viewed as a plus for Bracks and the government.

And whereas it is meet and proper to set out by way of preamble to this Act that, inasmuch as the Crown is the symbol of the free association of the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and as they are united by a common allegiance to the Crown, it would be in accord with the established constitutional position of all the members of the Commonwealth in relation to one another that any alteration in the law touching the Succession to the Throne or the Royal Style and Titles shall hereafter require the assent as well of the Parliaments of all the Dominions as of the Parliament of the United Kingdom:

Category: Member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States

However, legislating for alterations to the Act is a complex process, since the act is a common denominator in the shared succession of all the Commonwealth realms and the Statute of Westminster 1931 acknowledges by established convention that any changes to the rules of succession may be made only with the agreement of all of the states involved, with concurrent amendments to be made by each state's parliament or parliaments.

The common law constitutes the basis of the legal systems of: England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Ireland, federal law in the United States and the law of individual U. S. states ( except Louisiana ), federal law throughout Canada and the law of the individual provinces and territories ( except Quebec ), Australia ( both federal and individual states ), Kenya, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Pakistan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, The Bahamas, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Granadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, and many other generally English-speaking countries or Commonwealth countries ( except Scotland, which is bijuridicial, and Malta ).

The report of the Inter-Governmental Group on Criteria for Commonwealth Membership states that English is a symbol of Commonwealth heritage and unity.

* Massachusetts is a Commonwealth, declaring itself as such in its constitution, which states that " The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals: it is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.

The Commonwealth of Nations — formerly the British Commonwealth — is a voluntary association of 54 independent sovereign states, most of which are former British colonies, or dependencies of these colonies with three exceptions, Mozambique ( which was a Portuguese possession ), Rwanda ( which was a Belgian mandate ) and Cameroon ( which is a union of a French mandate and a British mandate ) plus the United Kingdom itself.

She also reigns as monarch directly in a number of states, known as Commonwealth realms.

Such arrangements are not to be confused with supranational entities which are not states and are not defined by a common monarchy but may ( or not ) have a symbolic, essentially protocollary, titled highest office, e. g. Head of the Commonwealth ( held by the British crown, but not legally reserved for it ) or ' Head of the Arab Union ' ( 14 February-14 July 1958, held by the Hashemite King of Iraq, during its short-lived Federation with Jordan, its Hashemite sister-realm ).

In 1947, the King issued letters patent granting his Canadian governor general permission to exercise all those powers belonging to the monarch in respect of Canada and, at the Imperial Conference of 1949, the decision was reached to use the term member of the Commonwealth instead of Dominion to refer to the non-British member states of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Therefore, he stands third in the line of succession to the thrones of sixteen independent sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms, and to the governorship of the Church of England, preceded by his father and elder brother, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge.

Category: Member states of the Commonwealth of Nations

* the preamble to the Constitution of Kentucky, which states, " We, the people of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberties we enjoy, and invoking the continuance of these blessings, do ordain and establish this Constitution "

According to Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, in his book " The Two Faces of Islam ", “ some say that during this vagabondage Ibn Abdul Wahhab came into contact with certain Englishmen who encouraged him to personal ambition as well as to a critical attitude about Islam .” Specifically, Mir ’ at al Harramin, a Turkish work by Ayyub Sabri Pasha, written in 1888, states that in Basra, Abdul Wahhab had come into contact with a British spy by the name of Hempher, who “ inspired in him the tricks and lies that he had learned from the British Ministry of the Commonwealth .”

With the Soviet Union collapsing, Gorbachev prepared the country to become a loose non-communist federation of independent states called the Commonwealth of Independent States.

This led to the U. S. Congress to enact the Public Law 81-600 which led to the Congressional approval of a local constitution drafted by a constitutional assembly elected by Puerto Rico and the renaming of the United States unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico as the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, using the same official name as the commonwealths of the U. S. states of Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia, as well as that of other sovereign nation countries such as Australia.

:* The federal ( Commonwealth ) government of Australia has a bicameral parliament, and each of Australia's six states has a bicameral parliament except for Queensland, which has a unicameral parliament.

The Judicial Committee consists of senior judges appointed as Privy Counsellors: Justices of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, judges of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, judges of the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland, judges of the Inner House of the Court of Session ( the supreme civil court in Scotland ), and judges from various other Commonwealth member states.

Contrary to most states, the Icelandic Commonwealth had no official leader.

His attitude towards the Commonwealth and the Federal was shaped by his first premiers ’ conference in 1965 when Prime Minister Menzies negotiated with the Victorian premier Henry Bolte to achieve an extra grant of funds for Victoria at the expense of the other states and closed the conference before the other Premiers could object.

All of the former Republics are now independent countries, with eleven of them ( all except the Baltic states and Georgia ) being very loosely organized under the heading of the Commonwealth of Independent States.