Message by Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon on Commonwealth Day
12 March 2007
The second Monday in March each year – this year, 12th March – is Commonwealth Day. The day is chosen for a very good reason. Across the 53 nations of the Commonwealth, the children of the Commonwealth are in school. And it is schools that are best placed to help young minds think about the world they live in, and to equip them with values for life.
Children are growing up in a world quite unlike that of even their parents. In a world of such extraordinary progress, wealth and potential, never has there been so much that threatens to reverse all of our gains. In the small world of our children’s classrooms, there has never been a greater sense of the ‘one world’ beyond – a world inextricably linked by business, technology, transport, climate, even culture. It is a world in which a challenge for one is a challenge for all, and in which our humanity is shared.
The theme for Commonwealth Day 2007 is ‘Respecting Difference, Promoting Understanding’. With a third of the world’s population, the Commonwealth is home to rich and poor, young and old, and people of every colour and creed. It is also an organisation that strives hard to make democracy a way of life. And yet we know full well that within it there are tensions, misunderstandings and fractures in almost all of our societies. There are communities divided by conflict; there are young people feeling adrift and apart; there are people of different faith, ethnicity and political persuasion who do not sit easily side by side. Some of these divisions arise from grievance and humiliation; others, for the simplest of reasons, like a lack of knowledge and understanding, or a fear of the unknown.
On Commonwealth Day 2007 and for the whole of the year, we must look at how we can do better. We have to be true to Nelson Mandela’s famous statement in 1994, that ‘The Commonwealth makes the world safe for diversity’.
At a special Commonwealth Observance in London today, representatives of the 53 nations will hear testimonies from five people who have worked to heal rifts and build communities. That Observance, and the messages of reconciliation and hope contained in it, will be echoed in similar events in Commonwealth capitals all over the world. In London we will hear a number of personal testimonies from across the Commonwealth – from Nigeria to Northern Ireland to Fiji to India to Jamaica. Each will illustrate how we deal with ‘difference’, whether between adult and child, male and female, or people of different religions, races and communities.
Later this year, the Commonwealth Commission on Respect and Understanding will report to our Heads of Government – analysing where we do and do not succeed in building communities, and starting to point to the practical ways of how to succeed. From the global acceptance of universal values, to the local acceptance of differences. From a true democratic culture of freedom, equality and respect under the law, to new approaches to quality and openness in education and the media, and a stronger response to the fact that poverty exacerbates tensions. From the need for nations to commit to working together multilaterally, to the need for budding individuals – above all, those Commonwealth children in their classrooms today – to live by the principles of respect and understanding.
Respecting difference and promoting understanding is the work of all 53 Commonwealth countries, and all of our 1.8 billion people – collectively and individually; among governments and peoples; among those who have been taught to do so, and those who are still being taught.
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