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Commonwealth Secretariat press release

Secretary-General Highlights Commonwealth’s ‘Healing Touch’

17 February 2003

Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon has reiterated the potential of the Commonwealth association to bring a 'healing touch' to international relations.
Speaking on the theme 'The Commonwealth and the Healing Touch' at the India International Centre in New Delhi today, Mr McKinnon recalled Pandit Nehru's phrase from a 1949 address to the Constituent Assembly to describe the role played by the Commonwealth today.
He said that in an increasingly interdependent world, "collective problems require collective solutions. Unilateral approaches will simply not work. Multilateralism is the only answer... The Commonwealth promotes democracy, human rights and the rule of law in many proactive ways, enabling people to participate freely in framing the societies in which they live."
Mr McKinnon said that the healing touch of the Commonwealth was manifested most directly through his own expanding programme of 'good offices', which strives to pre-empt conflict and to resolve them when they do occur.
The Secretary-General emphasised the role played by the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG), a committee of eight Foreign Ministers established in 1995 as the custodian of the Commonwealth's fundamental principles.
"The Commonwealth was the first international organisation which made it virtually automatic that a country is suspended from its councils in the event of the unconstitutional overthrow of an elected government... It has been a trailblazer in this regard and CMAG remains the only mechanism of its kind among international organisations," he added.
In his speech, Mr McKinnon also outlined some of India's contributions to the Commonwealth, including its request to remain in the Commonwealth after having chosen to become a republic in 1948, which led to the London Declaration. Moreover, India is today the fifth largest contributor to Commonwealth budgets and the largest supplier, among developing countries, of skilled personnel under the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation, the association's developmental arm.
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