Nel­son Man­dela once said, “It al­ways seems im­pos­si­ble un­til it is done.” As I re­flect on my nine-year tenure as Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Com­mon­wealth, I find deep truth in these words.

In a world marked by ris­ing geopo­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty and the ero­sion of mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism, the Com­mon­wealth does not sim­ply en­dure, it is thriv­ing. We have reaf­firmed the rel­e­vance of our shared val­ues, demon­strat­ed the pow­er of col­lec­tive ac­tion, and laid a foun­da­tion for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to pros­per to­geth­er.

From a group of eight na­tions in 1949, the Com­mon­wealth has grown in­to a dy­nam­ic fam­i­ly of 56 mem­ber states, en­com­pass­ing a third of the world’s pop­u­la­tion.