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• Differences and Understanding

Differences and Understanding

Date: 22 Nov 2006
Speaker: Secretary-General Don McKinnon
Location: High Sheriff’s Reception, Marlborough House, London

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Marlborough House, and my very special thanks to Dr Khalid Hameed, the High Sheriff of Greater London, who is our host tonight.

You’ll have seen that my title today is a grand one, and if you think it’s a mouthful, then you’ll just have to get used to it….. because ‘The Commonwealth: respecting difference and promoting understanding’ is the chosen theme for Commonwealth Day 2007.  It will have its day in the sun on March 12th – but of course it’s the stuff of all our days in the meantime and beyond.

‘The best of times, the worst of times …. the age of wisdom, the age of foolishness … the spring of hope, the winter of despair.’  I wonder if Dickens knew in 1859 that he might be projecting the world of 2006. 

I wonder, too, ‘how difficult are our times?’  Particularly when I think that a previous generation knew two World Wars which claimed 80 million lives; and - as the Cuban Missile crisis spiralled in October 1962 - it faced the prospect of imminent oblivion, ‘mutually assured destruction’, MAD by name and nature.   Perhaps it’s too easy – in a mediatised, ‘sound-bitten’ world – to exaggerate the gravity of today’s situation.  However badly the 21st century has started, the 20th was the bloodiest yet.

In 2006 we live in a world of extraordinary progress and opportunity.  Would I rather be my 8-year old son growing up now, or my father in New Zealand 80 years ago?   I’d say ‘now’.  Advances in science, medicine, technology - and all the very best things about globalisation, with the commerce, culture and ideas that now so readily cross borders and bind us as one humanity - mean that James is surely growing up in better times than his grandfather did.

Or is he? 

I spend my days giving audiences everywhere a litany of apocalyptically bad facts about the state of the world, not the least of which is that one in five people on this planet live in abject poverty, and two in five aren’t far behind.  And 80% of that ‘one in five’ – a cool 800 million people – live in the Commonwealth.

And with poverty comes a multitude of other bad things.  Our topic today – the need to bridge divides and build communities – is one such.  Poverty is nothing like the only reason why one group resents another, but it’s a big reason. 

But let’s own up to the fact that the subtext of our theme of ‘respecting difference and promoting understanding’ tonight is our concern about ‘Terror’, and the real or perceived threat of violence – local, national, international – from radicalised, marginalised people.  The media replays the theme to us daily.  Yes, they sensationalise it; but they also often substantiate it.  And if we were in London on 7th July last year, we experienced it first hand. 

A lot of people readily associate that Terror with fundamentalism of a religious variety.  Any religion can be vilified, and indeed right here in this country we have known militant Christianity and militant Islam. 

But let me simply say two things.

First, beware generalisations and over-simplified identities, especially in matters of faith.  Fundamentalism is not confined to any one religion or any ideology.  Furthermore it’s hard, for instance, to talk about a ‘Muslim identity’ when Islam is so diverse – from Albania to Bangladesh, from Tajikistan to Malaysia – and even so evidently divided within itself, and never more so than in today’s Iraq.  As Amartya Sen has pointed out in his latest book, all of us – wherever we are – have multiple identities, which go far beyond faith.  All faiths – Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish – preach the love of neighbour.  But all faiths can be abused, and at various times have been so. 

Second, and leading on from that, remember that the roots of terrorism can be found in many things – in faith, ethnicity, culture, nationality, poverty, economic and political causes, and more. 

So I contend that there are too many groups in too many countries today who are pushing or being pushed too far into too many corners.  21st Century conflict is not so much about countries and politics, as about ethnicity, faith, and language.  In a globalised world, perhaps present-day conflict is about the things that just won’t coalesce, meld or mix. 

Tonight I am starting to look at the principles by which societies and communities do and don’t function.  Not just the way people of different faiths and ethnicities sit side by side, but also people of different wealth, or sexuality, or politics, or more.  Because there are serious fractures in our societies and we must address them all.  And it’s a sad truth that it’s easier to create fractures than to heal them. 

In five minutes, the good work of centuries can be undone.  It just took one Milosevic - and a few others of like mind - to turn the tranquil, diverse and prosperous city that was Sarajevo into the scene of a violent three-year nightmare, only a decade ago. 

So how do we deal with crisis, conflict, and tension between and among nations, faiths and communities?

We do so when humanity, common sense, dialogue, active tolerance and respect – normally under the banner of political leadership – elbow their way through the crowd.  

It’s that combination which has played so great a role in bridging divides in our modern Commonwealth. 
We are rightly credited with helping to dismantle apartheid in South Africa: indeed it’s exactly 20 years since a Commonwealth delegation visited P W Botha and then Nelson Mandela on Robben Island. 
We are rightly credited with fighting different types of apartheid, like those of unfair subsidies and crippling tariff regimes which strangle poor countries’ ability to trade their way out of poverty. 
We have fought discrimination and stigmatisation of those suffering with HIV and AIDS. 
We have fought for the civil, political and economic rights of women. 
We have fought to see human rights established as being inalienable, like food and water. 
We have applied the leaven of trusted, discreet, mediation to defuse serious political tensions in some dozen or so Commonwealth countries through the work of my small team of ‘Special Envoys’.  

So the world and the Commonwealth have faced a multitude of divisions before, and overcome them.  We can continue to do so – the task before us is huge.

And that is where I turn to some of the detail as to what the Commonwealth is doing right now – to bring about respect for difference and to promote understanding.

Our present Commonwealth task is to bear out Nelson Mandela’s famous comment, soon after being elected South African President in 1994, that ‘the Commonwealth makes the world safe for diversity’.  We have to show that we are indeed ‘home’ to people of every colour and creed, to rich and poor.  (By the by, to 800 million Hindus, 500 million Muslims, and 400 million Christians.)

When our 53 Commonwealth Heads of Government met in Malta in November 2005, they – I quote – ‘affirmed the importance of promoting tolerance, respect, enlightened moderation and friendship among people of different races, faiths and cultures… and of building a common platform of unity against extremism and intolerance’.  And the Heads specifically requested me to explore initiatives to promote mutual understanding and respect among all faiths and communities in the Commonwealth.

This new Mandate requires us to report back to Heads in Kampala almost exactly a year from now.  Under the leadership of Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen, (whom I mentioned earlier), we have assembled an extraordinarily talented team.  We are now looking to this newly formed Commission of 10 people – with its supporting researchers and its plans for wide-ranging consultation – to break new ground.  We are asking them to show us which Commonwealth communities have found ways to bridge divides – and why and how – and then how we can replicate those models within our 53 nations, and beyond. 

It’s not for me to prejudge or prejudice their work, but I do hope that the Commission will look far, far beyond the highly emotive issues, like violence and faith, with which I began tonight.  I hope they will look around the Commonwealth at all our societies, and ask how they manage true cultural integration in even the smallest ways. 

Let me just share a very few of my own experiences of ‘community’.

My own country, New Zealand, might provide good examples of the hard work and commitment constantly needed to allow a growing and multi-cultural society, as inclusive of people of European as of Maori as of Pacific Island as of Asian descent.

Only this morning was I reading about a youth theatre here in the north of England, for instance, which is widely hailed for its success in bringing Muslim and non-Muslim youth together.  Note: the theatre doesn’t force dialogue on fundamentalism and racism – it just allows those young people to share common space, to be together, to be creative, to have fun.  

I have also started to share the themes of ‘respect and understanding’ at our Commonwealth ministerial meetings.  We took time out of the Finance Ministers Meeting in Colombo in September to discuss this.  Everything from the ways in which hierarchical societies like Vanuatu cater for all groups’ needs under the leadership of a traditional Paramount Chief ….. to the way that mixed and sometimes fractious countries like Malaysia and South Africa are committed to bringing diverse groups together under one banner – be it ‘Malaysia truly Asia’ or the ‘Rainbow Nation’. 

So stand by for a manual of best practice based on all our best Commonwealth experience on bridging divides and building communities.

Let me end by repeating ‘the Commonwealth way’, which I think is the universal way to acknowledge diversity, to make it work, and to celebrate it.  Tolerance is not a passive concept – it’s not about indulgence or indifference.  It’s about active engagement.  It’s about dialogue at every possible moment.  And let us truly champion the silent majority of people who believe in dialogue, and who work for it at every turn.

And dialogue means ‘multi-lateralism’ (literally, ‘having many sides’).  It means accepting that no culture, no nation, no religion has a monopoly on truth.  It means consensus: arriving at decisions on which all agree.  That is the Commonwealth way.  Consensus is sometimes painful, and sometimes the places we reach are lowest denominators, not highest multipliers.  But when our 53 countries take decisions they do not vote – they reach consensus.

The Commonwealth is often called a ‘family of nations’.  It is just that.  Like all families it has distant and wayward cousins, and unspoken tensions.  But so too does it have the moral authority of the closest bonds that most of us know – of those who are responsible to each other, who resolve their differences by talking, respecting, understanding – and celebrating.  Let the Commonwealth be seen as a microcosm of the wider world, as a family of peoples.

I began by saying that we older people have lived through tense times before.  And I mentioned my young son’s prospects. 

Being with Khalid here tonight – and knowing that on top of his great work to bridge religious divides, he has also done great things for the Commonwealth Youth Exchange Council – I am reminded of just whose future it is that we’re looking out for. 

Because our Commonwealth is a young Commonwealth. Of its nearly 2 billion people, a third are under 18, and a quarter under five.  Yet one in six children on this planet never reach their 5th birthday.  115 million kids worldwide never even go to primary school, let alone secondary.  And for those who are healthy and who are schooled – then the ‘next’ set of challenges kicks in: those of making a living, and of taking an active part in a society that embraces them whatever their fortune, their colour or their creed. 

Young people bear the brunt of many of our challenges today.  Let’s involve them in all our work. 

Let’s take the broadest possible view of the causes of division, and in turn be as broad and as all-embracing as we can in finding solutions to healing them.

It’s one Commonwealth Day’s theme …. but it’s a lifetime’s dedicated work.  ‘Respecting difference and promoting understanding’.

Thank you.

ENDS

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