Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma’s CHOGM diary

CHOGM was over in a flash this morning. Straight after breakfast, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group was reconstituted. The nine rotating Foreign Ministers are the guardians of our principles, and CMAG is at the heart of the Commonwealth of Values. Three of its existing members remain: Ghana (which now becomes Chair), Namibia and New Zealand. And six new countries join: Australia, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Maldives, Trinidad & Tobago (now Vice-Chair) and Vanuatu.

Perhaps the most important lines coming out of CHOGM 2009 are in the Trinidad and Tobago Affirmation on Commonwealth Values and Principles, paragraph 8, which says that: ‘We [the Commonwealth Heads of Government] recognize the vital role of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group as the custodian of the Commonwealth’s fundamental political values. We call on CMAG to explore ways in which it could more effectively deal with the full range of serious or persistent violations of our values by member countries’. So there we have it: a task for CMAG, to take the Commonwealth of Values into the 21st Century. There are cases it could possibly look at now – as there were different cases a year ago, as there will be different cases in a year’s time. To each and all we offer serious engagement and constructive solutions.

It was that sort of morning: ‘everything went through’. An ambitious declaration on young people, committing us to new ventures in supporting youth enterprise. A statement on non-communicable diseases, a particular focus in the Caribbean. The developing world is as prey to heart disease and other lifestyle afflictions, as it is to diseases such as AIDS and malaria. A statement on the CHOGM partnership theme. Six documents in all – full of words, most certainly – but also full of intent. Of them all, I feel the strongest about the Values statement, for it is by our works that we are known, and by our values that we stand or fall. The Singapore Declaration of 1971 served us for 20 years; the Harare Declaration of 1991 for 18 years. Let the T&T Affirmation serve us well into this century.

Amidst the tired but satisfied plaudits of the closing ceremony, my mind was wandering. Cossetted within a 5-star hotel, in the strange world of protocol, hierarchy and self-importance of Governmental meetings, the citizens of the Commonwealth – those for whom we work – can seem a long way away. So how I appreciated the words of Mohammed Nasheed, the new President of the Maldives: ‘we have no interest’, he said, ‘other than in serving our people’. Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana said the same: ‘we seek a better life for our people – together, we can make this happen’. 750 million of them were living in absolute poverty at the start of this year, and the figure now stands at nearer 800 million. If, as I have said, we are an organization that is ‘in and of our times, and equal to them’, then we should never sleep: our tasks are huge.

Where does the Commonwealth, 60 years old in 2009, head from here? Only those who are rhetorically inclined talk of consigning it to history, as a relic and an irrelevance. I hope that any critic can see that the Commonwealth has never been more relevant than it is now: in an interdependent world demanding collective thinking and solutions, it is ready-made for the 21st Century.

I said as much in my closing speech, recalling how, two years ago (at the last CHOGM, in Kampala) when this great honour of the Commonwealth Secretary-Generalship was conferred upon me, I had prepared no words in the event of being selected. They eventually came to me under the unforgiving lights of a phalanx of press photographers, when I said that this Commonwealth of ours constitutes what I termed a ‘great global good’. Two years later, I am more than ever certain that this is the case. It is great, but it can be greater: we know there is much that we can do better, and more that we can do. But at CHOGM 2009 I say again that it is indeed a great global good, and long may it remain so. Tomorrow, we head home.