Commonwealth Secretary-General Shirley Botchwey's address at the Opening Ceremony of the 2026 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in St John’s, Antigua and Barbuda on 3 November 2026
Antigua and Barbuda takes the Chair of our Commonwealth family as the second island nation in a row, after the wonderful work of Samoa.
My deep appreciation and thanks to the Government and people of Samoa. Here in St John’s, just as we did in Apia, we are demonstrating that in the Commonwealth a country’s size never limits its voice.
At this, my first Heads of Government Meeting as your Secretary-General, I stand before you humbly and with a heart filled with enormous gratitude for the trust you placed in me.
Your Majesty, as Head of the Commonwealth, you reminded us in Samoa: “Together, we can expand opportunities across this family of nations to build shared prosperity and truly resilient economies.”
That is the ambition we bring to this summit. We are delighted that you are with us, and I am truly grateful for your unstinting support.
We live in a world sorely in need of the Commonwealth spirit of always finding a way. A flawed multilateral system has fractured.
Citizens, from St John’s to Sydney, from Manchester to Mombasa, are living through profound uncertainty. Many, especially the young, are losing hope, and with it faith in democracy.
In a world of fracture and uncertainty, the strength of our values, the depth of our history, and the power of our global network make the Commonwealth an indispensable agent of change.
Our Charter calls us to principled, practical cooperation. Our network of 56 nations and 2.7 billion people is big enough to imagine change on a global scale and close enough as a family of nations to make that change happen.
That is what we are here to do.
Together with our hosts, and our member countries, we have remade this CHOGM as a summit of action.
Our goal is to build a new model of partnership and cooperation that is capable of responding to the scale of challenge we face; to avoid the mistakes of the past by making our collective interest the sum of our individual national interest. It is a success strategy that requires a mindset change, including discarding the old division of labour between states and business.
We have already began to make transformative change.
Our members have submitted bankable projects valued at 52 billion United States dollars, and this week we are connecting leaders directly with investors.
We shall follow this up with a trade and investment conference next year. For the first time, we shall bring together ministers of trade, finance and investment, with CEOs to work to reduce trade barriers among our countries to make our goal of 2 trillion US dollars intra-Commonwealth trade a reality in a few years. In partnership with trade and investment advisory groups, we expect the conference to facilitate the needed high impact investments to every member country.
Too many of our nations are held back by the rules on debt treatment and concessional funding.
So, we are working together on a common platform that positions the Commonwealth to change the international financial system for the benefit of our people.
Our young people, the Commonwealth’s greatest asset, are crying out for the skills and opportunities they need to build a good life. We hear them, and we are mobilising private capital to scale up distance education for millions.
As a major El Niño gathers force in the Pacific, with the potential to wreak havoc across a warming world, once again those who did the least to cause climate change stand to lose most from its shocks.
We saw it in the heartbreaking scenes of destruction on Barbuda caused by Hurricane Irma, and in Jamaica by Hurricane Melissa.
So, we are working with the private sector to unlock new capital.
For countries that cannot finance their renewable energy ambitions, new credit to finance investment.
For a family whose livelihood depends on a single fishing boat, and for countries, new work with insurers to speed up payouts after a disaster.
For our planet, scarred by decades of environmental degradation, a new Commonwealth Nature Initiative to restore habitats.
Heads of Government, Our people will judge this meeting by what it delivers for them.
Each of you brings the authority to act on behalf of your country. Together, you can deliver for a third of humanity. I urge you to seize this chance to build resilience and shared prosperity together. That spirit is captured in the motto of our hosts.
Emblazoned on the coat of arms of Antigua and Barbuda, beneath a bright sun rising in hope over the crashing waves, are the words:
Each Endeavouring, All Achieving.
Those words remind us that democratic cooperation is not a zero-sum game. Each nation, large or small, gains from what we all achieve together.
When we leave St John’s, let us leave as champions of our Commonwealth, ready to carry forward what we have started this week, and to put its full strength to work: making progress our people can feel and creating opportunities they can share.
Each endeavouring. All achieving.
