The Commonwealth: In the Service of a Noble Cause.
Date: 21 Mar 2000
Speaker: Secretary-General Chief Emeka Anyaoku
Location: The Royal Commonwealth Society, London, UK
I am especially pleased to be making it at this venue, in this revitalised and thriving Commonwealth Club. The Royal Commonwealth Society is a body with which I have had a long association. Indeed, I should recall here that in 1972 I became the first non-British Deputy Chairman. The Royal Commonwealth Society is not only the premier Commonwealth NGO in the United Kingdom but, with its affiliated societies in 35 countries overseas, has an important presence across the Commonwealth. That was why I was particularly delighted and honoured to have been elected your new President; for whatever the transient nature of office, the Commonwealth cause is one I can never put aside.
I came to the service of that great cause back in April 1966 and, apart from a three-month pause in 1983-4 when I was Foreign Minister of Nigeria, have been continuously at the Secretariat since then. So this is an opportunity for me to reflect on how remarkably the Commonwealth has evolved through all these years, with particular attention to the last ten, and to look ahead to what these changes portend for the Commonwealth in this new 21st century.
Perhaps my starting point should be the highly successful and remarkably satisfying Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Durban last November. It was a meeting that genuinely marked a turning point in the fifty?year history of the modern Commonwealth.
I say 'fifty years', because 1999 marked half a century since the London conference in 1949 at which Pandit Nehru, Clement Attlee and other Commonwealth leaders arrived at the formula which allowed the Commonwealth to have as members, countries with their own Heads of State. While embracing the best in the old Commonwealth as it had existed, this new dispensation pointed the way to the framework of equality between sovereign nations and their peoples, bound together by shared values, which has become the hallmark of the Commonwealth as we know it today.
These values were first formally propounded in the Declaration of Commonwealth Principles in Singapore in 1971; they found their fullest articulation so far in the Commonwealth Harare Declaration, adopted in 1991 by the first of the five CHOGMs which I have attended as Secretary-General. Looking back, I can readily say that Harare has been the Commonwealth's Mission Statement for the whole of my period in office. It has also become the yardstick by which that period will have to be judged, taking into account two imperatives - first, my belief that the Commonwealth needed at all times to live up to its principles, not by mere advocacy but by demonstrable action; and, second, for the association to show tangible and enlarging relevance to the needs of its members in a rapidly changing world.
In this context, the Durban Summit marked not just the fifty years of the modern Commonwealth but also the end of a particular phase in its history. That phase was marked by the battle to establish for real the shared values of the association. It was epitomised, first of all, by the completion of the remarkable democratic transition process in South Africa in 1994, and the return of Nigeria to a democratically elected government in 1999.
For much of the previous thirty-five years, the organisation had been dominated by the compelling issue of racial oppression. This came into particular focus in the struggle for the liberation of Southern Africa, a matter which has been interwoven with the Commonwealth's own evolution following the enforced departure of apartheid South Africa from the association in 1961. Most significant was the Commonwealth's deep involvement with Rhodesia?Zimbabwe from the time of UDI in 1965, through to the Lancaster House conference and the elections which brought Zimbabwe's independence in 1980.
The 1980s saw the increasing involvement of the Commonwealth in the mounting international campaign against the apartheid regime, in which the association, by virtue of its membership and its proclaimed anti-racist values, was in the front line. This was seen particularly in sending to South Africa the Commonwealth Eminent Persons' Group of 1986, which played a key role in the diplomatic moves which eventually led to the release of Nelson Mandela and which, as importantly, arrived at the negotiating formula which unlocked the transition process.
As Secretary-General, I was later able to help further this process at crucial moments, including a groundbreaking visit to South Africa in 1991. Thereafter, the Commonwealth was deployed with great efficacy, both in helping to combat violence in 1993-4 and in ensuring the success of the 1994 multi-racial elections which brought the ANC to power, Mandela to the Presidency, and South Africa back to the Commonwealth. To have been able to play a positive and creative role at this key moment in history, I count as one of the most satisfying moments of my secretary-generalship.
The holding of the 1999 CHOGM in Durban became in a sense a symbolic and joyful consecration of this transition to democracy, and of South Africa's return to the Commonwealth fold as a major player in the association. President Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Nelson Mandela last year, hosted the Durban summit, his first major international conference, with consummate skill. Moreover, South Africa's special position within the Commonwealth was demonstrated by the new role accorded to the CHOGM chair between summits, and also by President Mbeki's appointment as Chairman of the High Level Review Group to consider the future of the Commonwealth as it enters the new century, ten years after Harare.
The development of the Commonwealth as a 'community of democracies' - from a position where, in 1990, there had been nine military regimes or single-party dictatorships - is something that I count as one of the major achievements of the past ten years. In a way, this is the reverse side of the coin represented by the attainment of full democracy in South Africa. It had been clear for some time that, if the Commonwealth was to be a force for good in the world, it needed to be consistent about the principles which it proclaimed. This was especially so in the post-Cold War world, where democracy had become a kind of international political gold standard. Harare had to be followed by practical means of implementing the Commonwealth's principles, and it happened that the Nigerian crisis provided the opportunity to demonstrate these principles in action.
In New Zealand, in 1995, at the same time as the suspension of Nigeria, Heads of Government approved the Millbrook Commonwealth Action Programme which gave teeth to Harare, by setting up the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) to monitor the implementation of the Harare principles.
The arrival of CMAG is a testimony to the transformation of the Commonwealth itself from being just an advocate of shared values to becoming the very symbol and promoter of those values. As well as Nigeria and The Gambia, CMAG has also closely followed developments in Sierra Leone, where the Commonwealth has been an active force for democracy and peace. The Commonwealth led the campaign against the brief military government of 1997?8 and is one of the moral guarantors of the Lomé peace agreement of July 1999, which, in spite of the fragility of that peace and the trauma which civil conflict has brought that country, should lead the way to all-inclusive elections in 2001.
Nowhere was CMAG's vitality more evident than after the military coup in Pakistan in October last year. The prompt reaction of the Commonwealth, through CMAG, saw the Pakistan regime of General Musharraf suspended from the 'councils of the Commonwealth'. This was endorsed by Heads of Government in Durban, although a proposed sharper definition of CMAG's mandate was referred to the High Level Review Group which reports back to the next CHOGM in Australia in 2001. I believe that this will be a challenge to Commonwealth member governments to demonstrate the reality of their commitment to democracy.
Indeed, in the course of a decade of promoting and monitoring democracy, the Commonwealth has moved from the arena of simply assisting and monitoring elections themselves (and nearly 30 elections have been observed in that time) to that of 'deepening democracy', through the involvement of what we now call 'civil society'. It has become increasingly apparent, as President Obasanjo told the summit in Durban, that democracy has, above all, to be "sustainable".
The Commonwealth's democratic vocation has developed alongside the increasing momentum that has been given to the idea of the Secretary-General's 'good offices'. The nature of the Commonwealth family, and its multiple informal ties, means that the Secretary-General is often called upon to exercise discreet influence in the resolution of disputes that threaten more serious conflicts, or are already existing conflicts. In the past ten years, I have been involved in a host of ways, including using special envoys, in Bangladesh, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, Lesotho, Guyana and the Solomon Islands to name some. It is an area of activity which is clearly likely to grow in years to come, given the Commonwealth's ability to play a beneficial role where other mediators may have difficulty.
Apart from this evolution of the Commonwealth on the political front, there has also been in the past few years a reawakening of the idea of the Commonwealth as an economic force, as a catalysing agent for development. The establishment of the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation in 1971, whose flexibility and cost effectiveness have made it worth its weight in gold to those that have benefited from it, has provided the Commonwealth with a practical mechanism for assisting the socio-economic development efforts of its members. From beginnings of less than half a million pounds in 1971, it rose to nearly £30m, in the early 1990s. Although its resources have since declined, it must continue to be one of the Commonwealth's most important instruments in this new century and I would wish now to make this renewed appeal to member governments to ensure that this jewel is maintained in its full lustre in the Commonwealth's crown.
It has been in the 1990s, however, that further efforts have been made to increase the means available to its developing member states, to help promote that most telling of all human rights, the right to development. One important innovation, which has not received the publicity it deserves, has been the establishment of four regional investment funds - for Africa, South Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean - under the Commonwealth Private Investment Initiative. Administered by the CDC, this was initiated as a response to increasing fears that official development assistance was on a declining curve and the awareness that the engine of growth in more and more countries was private capital investment.
This concern to involve the private sector in development was directly behind the Edinburgh Declaration on the Promotion of Shared Prosperity, adopted by Heads at their 1997 CHOGM. Among the widely recognised concerns, was how Commonwealth instruments could be used to encourage trade, investment and commerce. The Commonwealth Business Council was set up in the run up to Edinburgh as a key agency for this purpose. In little over two years this has proved to be a remarkable success story from the inaugural forum in London in 1997, to the massively successful one in Johannesburg in November 1999. And I have just attended the Commonwealth-Nigeria Investment Conference in Abuja which attracted 120 foreign investors and 200 Nigerian businessmen, as well as considerable Nigerian government interest.
Edinburgh had also articulated growing Commonwealth concerns about both expectations and fears on the subject of globalisation. These concerns found full expression two years later in the main declaration from the Durban summit, issued from the Retreat at Fancourt. While recognising the unstoppable nature of globalisation, the Commonwealth's major concern is to see that many in their ranks are not marginalised by the process, and that the benefits are distributed more equitably both between and within countries. The Trade and Investment Access Facility set up at Edinburgh in 1997, has already played a useful role in helping several Commonwealth member countries in their efforts to cope with globalisation and, as Heads of Government agreed in Durban, it could do much more.
The Fancourt Declaration also made the point that the world trading system must take account of the interests of all countries, and not just the most powerful. The next round of trade talks have to have a development dimension, and the Commonwealth can play an important and constructive role in helping that process.
Trade issues have also highlighted what the Commonwealth can do for small states, which again is a theme that has developed only in the past few years. The establishment in 1998 of the Joint Task Force between the Commonwealth and the World Bank on the subject has already produced important results. There was another meeting of the Task Force in London in February which agreed a report that can now become the basis for action, and illustrates how much the smaller members of the Commonwealth can look to the organisation to take up their cause.
The Joint Task Force is also a good illustration of the wider recognition of the potential of the Commonwealth in co-operating with other international institutions as a way of prosecuting more effectively our international objectives. In this respect I was particularly glad that the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Kofi Annan, was not only able to come to London to deliver the Commonwealth Lecture a week ago, but also attended the Commonwealth Day Observance and my evening reception the day before.
Again, on the economic front, the Commonwealth has played an often-unsung pioneering role in the whole campaign to secure debt relief for the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) through several Commonwealth Finance Ministers meetings in the past decade. In spite of a major breakthrough on the subject at the G7 summit in Cologne last June, which made a commitment to deepen and widen the process, it is still worth making a further impassioned appeal for the process to be speeded up. There are still too few countries who are actually benefiting from the initiative. The Commonwealth will surely continue to be in the forefront of the debt campaign, which is a key element, though by no means the only one, in international efforts for poverty alleviation.
I have tried, from the experience of the past ten years, to outline some of the challenges the Commonwealth has faced as we enter the new century. Let me now attempt to chart the future.
I cannot underline enough here the very real challenge of consolidating the fundamental values of the association among its members so that those values may become a way of life for Commonwealth peoples. We are still very far from that, as events in Pakistan have shown. In my view, basic to meeting this challenge is finding ways in which the Commonwealth can move from hectoring and assisting its members to become more democratic to finding effective ways of invigilating democratic practices with a view to putting right deficiencies before they result in crises.
I do not mind saying here that one of the ways in which I had sought to do this over the last two years was by actively promoting an enlarged mandate for CMAG to take account of this need for pre-emptive action. While CMAG itself had eventually agreed to recommend this, it was not readily accepted in Durban. I must therefore express the hope that the High Level Review Group will tackle this subject frankly and robustly, despite its sensitivities, because I believe that the challenge it contains will help increase the capacity of the organisation to become a more effective promoter of its fundamental values.
Related to this is the need for the Commonwealth to realise that it is uniquely well placed to have a singular role in serving as an exemplar of how the often-damaging problems of divisive diversity and pluralism can be more successfully managed. Looking at so many bitter conflicts that have sprung in different parts of the world from the rise of ethnic, cultural and religious atavism following the end of the Cold War, this is arguably one of the most important issues facing the world today.
This January, the Commonwealth jointly with La Francophonie, held a colloquium in Cameroon on the subject of Democracy in Pluralistic Societies; I hope that we will be able to follow this up. I am sure that our association has a pioneering role in convincing the world that understanding this question and its institutional implications may well be the best form of conflict prevention.
By the same token, I have no doubt that this will be a millennium which would reflect a far greater role by civil society in promoting the welfare and good governance of our populations. The nation state in many respects is under siege: in some cases, it is too large to provide a means of identity or a channel of participation for the individual; but also, in an increasing number of areas, it is too small to be able to confront the new challenges of a globalised world. In that context, it is active citizens and civil society organizations which increasingly will be providing the leadership in advancing the interests of the marginalised, the excluded and vulnerable groups, and which will be working, in partnership with governments for more humane and better governed societies. That was the message that came out of the Third Commonwealth NGO Forum on 'Citizens and Governance' which met shortly before the Durban CHOGM. I hope the same voices will be heard in the UN-Sponsored Forum on Civil Society at the time of the Millennium Session in New York next September.
There is a clear role in all this for the Royal Commonwealth Society in building on its already extensive Commonwealth network, and mobilising the people of the Commonwealth in their own countries, and across the association, towards this end. The agents for this activity can be Commonwealth Societies in each of our 54-member nations; I would hope that part of the RCS's future mission would be one of rejuvenation and expansion to every part of the Commonwealth in carrying forward that message. In saying this as your new President, I feel sure that this would be consistent with the excellent leadership which our Chairman, Sir Michael McWilliam has given to the Society. In turn, I can say with no less confidence that our new Director-General, Stuart Mole, will prove a worthy and dynamic successor to all the valuable work that has so far been achieved by Peter Luff.
I would like to close with one final observation: I have often said that the Commonwealth is indubitably a force for good in the world. But this is not just because of the common positions that the organisation can take on issues like democracy, debt or trade, but because each Commonwealth member can draw inspiration from its membership to sustain and help each other, as seen in the way several Commonwealth members rallied to support its newest member, Mozambique, when faced with the terrible tragedy of the recent flooding.
And this relates to the inspiration that also comes from the example Commonwealth countries set each other; or absorb from each other, sometimes at joint meetings of ministers, sometimes from exchanges at the level of civil society through the vital network of professional organisations which are one of the pillars on which the association rests. Besides, the more the Commonwealth proclaims its shared values, however many shortfalls there may be, the moral inspiration and example is always there. I would like to feel that the last ten years have helped a further definition of the Commonwealth's role in this respect.
As I demit office, I will of course be passing the baton to my good friend Don McKinnon, with whom, as New Zealand's Foreign Minister through all my period in office, I have worked on some of the great issues facing the Commonwealth - human rights and democracy; Southern Africa; and small states. I have every confidence he will carry the burden well, and I believe he will find an organization in good heart and in high standing with the wider world.
Of the Commonwealth's increasing relevance and value in the 21st century, I have no doubt. And I expect that the tired old myths presenting the Commonwealth as an irrelevant imperial hangover, which are still occasionally repeated to the bewilderment of those that have had anything to do with the modern Commonwealth, may now be put to rest. The capacity of the Commonwealth to contribute to dealing with the challenges which the new century presents is too important for us to be still befuddled by ghosts and antiques. I hope that my stewardship has helped to better equip the Commonwealth to meet those challenges - and I take pride in having been in the service of such a noble cause.
21 March 2000
London
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