BELIZE CITY, Mon. June 20, 2022
The 2022 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM 2022) commenced yesterday in Kigali, Rwanda, with day 1 of the Commonwealth Youth Forum. Commonwealth Youth Council Regional Representative for the Caribbean and Americas, Dominque Noralez, and Deputy Mayor of Belize Allan Pollard are among the two Belizean youth representing the country at the bi-annual meeting.
This year’s CHOGM is being held under the theme, “Delivering a Common Future: Connecting, Innovating, Transforming,” and will run from Sunday, June 19, 2022, which was the day on which the forum commenced, to Saturday, June 25, when the final high-level talks between the heads of Commonwealth nations will be concluded. This official meeting among those heads of state starts on Friday, but is preceded by four days of forums touching on key areas affecting all Commonwealth nations.
The focus of this year’s meeting will be on recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, tackling climate change and poverty, boosting trade, and promoting sustainable development. Today, the Commonwealth Women’s Forum will begin, and it will continue into tomorrow, June 21. The Youth Forum which started yesterday, on Sunday, June 19, 2022, will also continue. A business forum is also scheduled to start on that day and end on June 23.
On Wednesday, the ministerial meetings will begin with a meeting of the ministers action group and a gathering of small states. A side event on climate change will also take place during a breakfast meeting on that day. Ministerial and high-level meetings are set to begin on Thursday. On Friday, the official opening ceremony of the CHOGM 2022 will take place, followed by the executive sessions, which are set to continue into Saturday night before the closing of this year’s meeting.
Commonwealth leaders will meet for the first time in four years since the meeting was canceled in June 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic; this meeting is held every two years, since the first in 1971. In 2018, the last meeting was held in the United Kingdom. Several side events covering a wide range of topics will be held in conjunction with the main scheduled events.
Actions on policies to improve the quality of life for all people living in the Commonwealth member states are to be agreed on. Those decisions will guide the work of the Commonwealth Secretariat.