Keystone-SDA
King Charles III and his wife, Queen Camilla, left the Samoa Islands on Saturday, at the end of a marathon 11-day tour of the Pacific marked in particular by a Commonwealth appeal to the United Kingdom to make amends for its colonial past.
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October 26, 2024 – 03:57
(Keystone-ATS) At the end of its stormy summit which ended on Saturday, the Commonwealth announced the appointment of the Ghanaian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, as its new secretary-general.
During this trip, his first major trip abroad since the announcement of his cancer at the start of the year, Charles III, 75, participated in more than 30 events.
The royal couple visited Sydney, Canberra and Apia, the capital of Samoa.
First Commonwealth Summit
Charles attended his first summit of the leaders of the 56 member states of the Commonwealth, with the objective of bringing this organization inherited from the British Empire into modernity.
But discussions about tackling climate change have been overshadowed by history.
Many African, Caribbean and Pacific nations want Britain and other European powers to pay financial compensation for slavery or at least make political amends.
The British royal family, which benefited from the slave trade for centuries, has been called to apologize.
But the monarch refrained from doing so on Friday, asking summit participants to “reject the language of division.”
“I understand, listening to people across the Commonwealth, that the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate,” he said.
“None of us can change the past. But we can commit, with all our hearts, to learning from them and finding creative ways to correct the inequalities that persist. »
The Commonwealth was originally made up of former British colonies but later expanded with countries like Togo and Gabon, two former French colonies.
