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Commonwealth Continues to Provide Global Leadership

27 July 2006

The Commonwealth has continued to provide global leadership and demonstrated different dimensions of it.

This has continued to make it a relevant and important international player and attracts aspiring members, according to Amitav Banerji, Director and Head of the Office of the Commonwealth Secretary-General.

"The Commonwealth has consistently maintained a leadership role in the international community on issues where it has found it possible to make a special contribution. That potential remains and must be maintained," he says.

Speaking at a panel discussion on 'Symbols, Sinecures and Satraps: Dimensions of Commonwealth Leadership' organised by the Royal Commonwealth Society and the Commonwealth Association at the Commonwealth Club in London, UK, on 19 July 2006, Mr Banerji emphasised that there is no dearth of individual leadership of a high calibre in the Commonwealth.

He said it will be an ever greater challenge to get government leaders to focus specifically on the Commonwealth given the many other preoccupations and distractions they face and the array of international organisations to which their countries belong.

Mr Banerji said the Commonwealth has demonstrated moral, political and intellectual leadership by moulding and influencing global opinion on key issues from time to time, as well as taking initiatives that other international organisations have sought to emulate.

He cited the vulnerability of small states, the campaign to free Heavily Indebted Poor Countries of their debt burden and the organic relationship between democracy and development, as areas of distinctive Commonwealth contribution.

"The Harare Declaration and the Millbrook Action Programme, taken together, are an excellent example of Commonwealth leadership in the promotion of democracy and good governance," he stated.

"There is also leadership of a more technical nature that the Commonwealth continues to provide," said Mr Banerji, pinpointing the Commonwealth Secretariat's debt management software, anti-terrorism legislation and manuals of good practice in gender, education, human rights, public service reform and corporate goverance.

He stated that the position of the Commonwealth Chairperson-in-Office, created in 1999, had given rise to a new opportunity for leadership, through a role that advocates Commonwealth positions on the global stage or "to help guide the ship if it ran into troubled waters". He cited the example of Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo's close personal involvement in handling the issue of Zimbabwe when he was Chairperson-in-Office during 2003-2005.

Also speaking at this event was Mark Robinson, a Senior Associate and member of St Anthony's College at Oxford University, and Dr Moses Anafu, a former Secretariat staff member.