Dozens of Commonwealth leaders descend on Antigua at time of global political turbulence

Lead­ers rep­re­sent­ing near­ly a third of the world’s pop­u­la­tion are meet­ing on the tiny Caribbean is­land of An­tigua this week to strength­en ties dur­ing a time of glob­al po­lit­i­cal up­heaval.

New deals and pledges are ex­pect­ed to emerge from the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing, which is held every two years.

The Com­mon­wealth is made up of 56 na­tions span­ning Africa, Asia, the Amer­i­c­as, Eu­rope and the Pa­cif­ic, most of which were once part of the British Em­pire. Their lead­ers are sched­uled to at­tend, along with of­fi­cials from Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Brazil and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.