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Opening Ceremony of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM)

Date: 25 Nov 2005
Speaker: the Hon Dr Lawrence Gonzi, Prime Minister of Malta
Location: Valletta, Friday

Your Majesty,
Honourable Heads of Government,
Honourable Secretary-General,
Distinguished Guests,
Citizens of the Commonwealth,

Welcome to this historic moment this morning.

It is indeed an honour and a privilege to welcome you all on behalf of my Government and the people of Malta. We welcome you Heads of Government and we welcome the people whom you represent, their aspirations, their hopes, their sufferings, their joys and their achievements.

We, the leaders of over 50 countries, representing five continents and 1.8 billion people, gather this morning at a gateway.

The gateway leads into a world in which knowledge is the greatest source of wealth; a world whose common wealth is its peoples; a world that prizes, among its human resources, the knowledge of those richest in human experience; a world in which the constraints of geolocation can be eased by networks that combine the appropriate material infrastructure of contemporary technology with the specific qualities of human, and humane, communication.

It is a point of great pride for me that, to discuss the opportunities offered by this gateway, we have gathered in Malta. For thousands of years, my country has served as a regional node of networks of intercontinental trade and communication. The historic record of connectivity and cross-cultural communication is written in the very DNA and language of the Maltese people: a nation of multi-ethnic background, of a European culture but with a language that belongs to the same family as Arabic. The people of a small island, with no resources to speak of but themselves, who have always thrived when connected up to the rest of the world, can readily appreciate the promise held up by a properly networked world.

Unfortunately, however, at this moment too few of the world's people are able to pass through this gateway of human development. Underdevelopment appears unrelenting. Poverty resists eradication. Differences in life expectancy remain too wide to be just. Too many people are forced, by various pressures, to migrate from their homelands. In such a context, it might seem that the new communication technologies will serve, not to emancipate and connect people, but to divide, more radically than ever, the poor from the better off.

Some important global responses are being made to these challenges. The United Nations has established its Millennium Development Goals. The G8 has made debt relief a central plank of its contribution to the elimination of poverty. The recent World Summit on the Information Society has highlighted the provision of low-cost technology.

In this context, the Commonwealth too has an irreplaceable contribution to make. Its diverse membership and the shared values implied by a common language make it an ideal hub for thinking about and managing global relationships by networking, in all its forms.

The best reply, the most robust response to poverty and forced migration is surely to give people faith in their future, faith that they also are included in global thinking about networks for development: faith that human civilisation cares for their future and for their well-being

Malta, a gateway of Mediterranean civilisation and transcontinental networks for thousands of years, wants to work with the rest of the Commonwealth to renew that faith in the 21st century.