Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting

Queen Elizabeth II, who was the Head of the Commonwealth, attended every CHOGM beginning with Ottawa in 1973 until Perth in 2011,[2] although her formal participation only began in 1997.

CHOGMs have discussed the continuation of apartheid rule in South Africa and how to end it, military coups in Pakistan and Fiji, and allegations of electoral fraud in Zimbabwe.

Sometimes the member states agree on a common idea or solution and release a joint statement declaring their opinion.

More recently, beginning at the 1997 CHOGM, the meeting has had an official theme, set by the host nation, on which the primary discussions have been focused.

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 co-ordinate policies towards Rhodesia).

They were also renamed the 'Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings' to reflect the growing diversity of the constitutional structures in the Commonwealth.

However, the majority of the important decisions are held not in the main meetings themselves, but at the informal 'retreats': introduced at the second CHOGM, in Ottawa, by Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Trudeau,[10] but reminiscent of the excursions to Chequers or Dorneywood in the days of the Prime Ministers' Conferences.

[10] First officially recognised at Limassol in 1993,[7] these events, spanning a longer period than the meeting itself, have, to an extent, preserved the length of the CHOGM: but only in the cultural sphere.

During the 1980s, CHOGMs were dominated by calls for the Commonwealth to impose sanctions on South Africa to pressure the country to end apartheid.

[12] In 2011, British Prime Minister David Cameron informed the British House of Commons that his proposals to reform the rules governing royal succession, a change which would require the approval of all sixteen Commonwealth realms, was approved at the 28–30 October CHOGM in Perth, subsequently referred to as the Perth Agreement.

[20] A bomb exploded at the Sydney Hilton Hotel, the venue for the February 1978 Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting.

Similarly, President James Mancham's attendance of the 1977 CHOGM gave Prime Minister France-Albert René the opportunity to seize power in the Seychelles.

Heads of State were also in attendance and the position of Chair-In-Office did not transfer to the prime minister of the United Kingdom.