The Royal Society for Asian Affairs biennial dinner

Lord Denman, Sir David John, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen: I have been on a very long tour over many, many days, which took me first to Trinidad and Tobago. I was honoured to be the 2009 Eric Williams lecturer and – because we are going to have the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Port of Spain in November – I also had to have discussions about it with Prime Minister Manning and his team.

Then I was in the Bahamas where we had a meeting of local self governors, to which we attach the highest importance. The Prime Minister was there. But as I am standing now before the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, I must be back in London!

It is a pleasure to be back, just in time – I got back at lunchtime for this – because I think it is very appropriate that you should have thought to invite the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth in this particular year.

When we think of the modern Commonwealth –and we are now celebrating its 60^th anniversary – its creation was utterly inseparable from the Asian contribution.

In 1949, when the transition had to be made from the old Commonwealth to whatever might emerge in the new Commonwealth, three Asian countries were at the forefront of the dialogue: India, Sri Lanka (Ceylon at that time), and Pakistan. Meetings took place over several days in London before the London Declaration was forged.

It is perhaps difficult now to imagine how things were at that time, and to recall how difficult an exercise that must have been. It was remarkable that countries moved from what you might call compulsory allegiance to the crown, to a voluntary allegiance of sorts – as free states – through the Commonwealth.

Everybody played their role: the old Commonwealth, the new Commonwealth, and His Majesty, King George VI, as well. In the end, whatever could be done had to have his consent.

We were delighted recently when Her Majesty the Queen was gracious enough to mark the anniversary by hosting a reception. Then, I was very glad to be able to acknowledge the great role that her father had played, and also to highlight the Commonwealth qualities which he identified as being key to the London Declaration.

What he said about flexibility, about being able to understand each others’ point of view and of being open-minded to others, and the words that he used, these continue to be the strengths of the Commonwealth today. So it is appropriate that I should be standing here on the 60^th anniversary.

Diversity, which was demonstrated then, has been one of the primary characteristics of this organisation.

One doesn’t, I think, sufficiently appreciate what was happening at that time. This was the first diplomatic encounter between the old world and the emerging world.

What happened in London in 1949 was something which was absolutely instant. That exercise was a truly historic exercise, which is why I have always felt - even before I became Secretary-General and had a vested interest in making these points - that it is really the Commonwealth which introduced the very notion of an international community to the world.

It is hard now to recall that this idea did not exist before the war. There was no international community: it had to be created; it was a pioneering act. It was an act of political will and statesmanship.

I have said before that whenever my wife and I go to Downing Street for Trooping the Colour, I always examine the older pictures of Atlee, Churchill, Menzies, Nehru, leaders from our countries, wondering exactly what it was they were meeting for. Because they did not really have an agenda. They simply met in recognition of the fact that they would like, by this gesture, to create an international community. And what a community it has proved to be.

When Her Majesty was kind enough to invite me to Windsor recently, she showed me some Commonwealth archives. I was happy to point out to her what I saw when reading His Majesty’s very first address to the Commonwealth leaders. I told her: “Your Majesty, I saw that he had cut out the word ‘seven’ from his address, with his own hand, in pencil, and written the word ‘eight’.” There were seven heads of government gathered in London in 1949, and one foreign minister. Yet George VI would not see the 8^th member excluded.

The other aspect one doesn’t quite realise about the Commonwealth is how it enabled every country that became independent and joined the Commonwealth instantly to internationalise themselves.

They went to CHOGMs, they met their counterparts from all over the world, and they came to understand perspectives and points of view from all over the world. It was a crash course in turning countries’ national focus, which had seen them to independence, into a larger view of the world.

Leaders themselves took on the aspect not of national leaders or even liberation leaders in some cases, but that of internationalist, global leaders.

This is something which was possible through the Commonwealth for a very simple reason. It is a unique organisation in as much as it gives equal time. So when the original London Declaration spoke about ‘freely and equally associated states’, they meant it. It wasn’t just a rhetorical turn of phrase.

Because in the Commonwealth, Tuvalu, with its population of 10,000 people and India, with a billion, have equal time. That is the culture of the Commonwealth. It is built on a very important consideration that it doesn’t matter whether you come from a country with rich endowments or a large population: either way, you have your say in the Commonwealth, and anyone can say something that may have meaning for the world.

It combines global wisdom with national interest. Without programming itself, but by acting in this collective spirit, it has become what it is.

These things cannot be done by fiat. In life, the invisible tends always to be more important than what is visible. The real strength of the Commonwealth is this.

We like to call ourselves a values-based organisation, which is what we are. I think the creation of an international community is the greatest value which the Commonwealth brought to the world.

The political bipolarity of the Cold War led to competition between the superpowers in cultivating other countries. The older superpowers had a vested interest in seeing that their influence was preserved and advanced. But as soon as the Cold War was over, it became very clear that every society had to develop ideas for themselves and for their own sustainability.

It was the Commonwealth which really moved swiftly in recognition of this, and created within a few months of the termination of the Cold War the famous Harare Principles. It has continued to build on these principles. This wasn’t a one-time action: it is what was possible at that point of time.

After that came Millbrook in 1995, where the Secretariat wanted to scrutinise whether - as a peer group - it was living up to what it said it would be able to do.

Then we had the Latimer House principles of 2003, which reaffirmed the integrity and the autonomy and the independence of the three great pillars of state: the legislature, the judiciary and the executive.

Then, in 2005, we had the Aberdeen principles, which basically said that democracy is all very well, but must be seen in action at all levels, and transformation must be seen by people at the grass roots. So what you are able to do at a lower level - democratising a society - is what must give coherence to your society.

The importance of these principles is that they became not only a good example to which 53 countries try to adhere to, but also that they have been replicated and mirrored in other parts of the world.

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) certainly has them. And in Africa, when you look at the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and its peer-review mechanism, you see that it is the 18 African members of the Commonwealth who have driven the process forward enormously by saying - if it can be done there, it can be done here as well.

Likewise the Biketawa Declaration is really a copy of the Commonwealth principles applied in the Pacific. And the members of the Pacific Islands Forum also gave themselves this.

The Commonwealth is a values-based organisation, and it has also been instrumental in taking the lead in creating a values-based world. The importance of this is that in the end, when individual societies pass through phases of great stress, it is really this kind of intrinsic strength which holds things together.

When we do our work, it is institution building in areas like Good Offices, legislative drafting and working with the Commonwealth Parliamentary organisations. All of it is aimed at consolidating and strengthening in practical terms what have been adopted as values. In other words, providing a tool kit or giving a practical dimension to what has been adopted.

One of the reasons why this organisation, which does great global good, is not as well known as it should be is because we do a lot of our work under the radar. We have to, because this is what creates trust.

Recently people may have read that the Maldives became a multi-party democracy. The President of 30 years accepted the results of an election and handed over power.

It took the Commonwealth seven or eight years to help the Maldives achieve that change. And we were able to draw a deep breath after this, in a way in which no other organisation can.

The work of writing the constitution in the Maldives, of establishing the Human Rights Commission and the Election Commission, began with an envoy from Malaysia who worked year after year towards this end.

This gives us the kind of credibility which we found displayed recently in the Ghana elections. The Commonwealth Observer Group played a crucial role - saying the right things all the time, meeting the people, emphasising these principles and playing a key role.

Everybody said there were many observers in Ghana at the elections, but they had their eyes and ears turned to what the Commonwealth Observer Group was saying and doing.

It is because of the credibility which we have as a values-based organisation that we are able to be creative in this way. That is one of our brand strengths as an organisation.

Another one is what you might call ‘inclusiveness’. We are really an organisation which looks out for small states and vulnerable states.

The nature of power politics in the world is such that this inclusiveness is hard to bring about, in a world seemingly divided between deal makers and deal takers.

Inclusiveness is our Commonwealth watchword, especially in negotiating areas like environment and trade. That is why we are active in Brussels; and that is why we are active in Geneva.

So we are a global partner. We are also a peoples’ organisation, because in 1965, when the Secretariat was created, at the same time the Commonwealth Foundation was created.

I don’t think the word civil society existed at that time. It was also a time when governments did not really accept NGOs. But we recognised that we were a people-centred organisation and that we had to move on a broad front.

When we have our CHOGMs and our summit meetings, we in fact bring together civil society, young people and business people, with governments.

In an organisation like this, obviously there is a very special resonance and place for Asia. Now, about 80 per cent of the Commonwealth’s population is in Asia.

It is very heartening and it is a development of uncommon importance that all the countries of South Asia have taken the democratic path in the last few years. It enhances the credibility of the institution that its largest regional population group has done this.

The second important lesson that has come from Asia is based on consolidation. First came the consolidation of Europe: in the first half of the last century that continent showed us how not to do things; and in the second half of the century it showed us how to do things.

But then came the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, which was built on the belief that you must not allow friction in your bilateral relationships to allow the regional and collective potential to be submerged.

It was a fascinating demonstration that it is whole regions that make progress. Individual countries may do so, but it is very difficult to do so if they are not part of whole regions.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, SAARC, is trying to do the same as ASEAN. We have three members of the Commonwealth from ASEAN. Asia taught us the value of regionalism.

A third very important Asian contribution is that it has really been one of those regions which have contributed to the idea that North and South are geographical ideas to be overcome.

It is the region which first demonstrated that North is not geography. ‘North’ is really an ability to do something.

This led to a globalisation of the economy in a way which we could never have conceived even a couple of decades ago. I read that last year, I think for the first time, trade from Asia was more than half of global trade.

This tendency is going to pick up even more rapidly. Overcoming the North-South paradigm means that within the Commonwealth it is now possible to have networks created along so many axes, and not just along the lines of the older North/South partnerships.

This is because of the variety that exists in Asian countries and within Asia itself. This was one of the reasons why we are investigating the idea of creating a ‘Partnership Platform’, which will be a portal website to provide potential partners – whether it is in farming, extension services, skills development, manufacturing, getting examples of renewable energy, best practice in governance, ITC practices, E-health or E-education, or whatever – with a vehicle to give practical reality to the idea of partnership.

I think the time has come for the Commonwealth to demonstrate that although it is an organisation on five continents – with a diverse membership of countries small and large, landlocked and island, in various stages of development – it has a role as an enabler and a facilitator in varying forms of partnerships: partnerships of individuals, partnerships of co-operations, partnerships of institutions and inter-governmental partnerships.

Therefore, in the time to come, I look forward to the role which will devolve upon Asia: in the political sense, which I have just sketched out; in the economic sense; and in terms of the great social challenges which lie ahead.

I want to end on a sobering note. If you look at the Millennium Development Goals and the challenges that are before us – maternal mortality and infant mortality, primary school education and so on – you will find that most of the challenges reside in Asia, particularly in South Asia.

Therefore there is a huge mountain to be climbed. A country like India can point to the 300 million who have been taken out of poverty, but then you can also point to the 300 million Indians who are still in poverty.

We are young nations trying to create a socially harmonious society, and to live peacefully and in amity with each other in the houses that we have created.

Here, the Commonwealth has a great example to offer. We produced a report called Civil Paths to Peace that was accepted at the CHOGM in Kampala. It is quite a remarkable document.

Basically what it says is that we have multiple personalities. We must respect our multiple personalities and the depth which each individual has within himself or herself, and not reduce ourselves to singular personalities.

In the end, how you mediate conflict is important. Youth are particularly important in this task; the role of women is important, as are those of the media and of schools. Also, it is important politically to reach out to people or minorities that might feel neglected within the society as a whole. The report makes it clear that ‘insult to injury is like salt to a wound’.

So many of these precepts, all accepted by our leaders, are the ones which we feel are a balm and a healing touch to the world today.

The world is described as a globalising world; I would describe it equally as a compacting world.

Because a compacting world conveys much better the feeling that things are happening with a certain force. Parts of the world are integrating; parts of the world are colliding. I think we are going to be in this situation for a very long time to come.

An organisation like the Commonwealth is one which has always exercised the wisdom function, answering the question: “What is it that we should be doing in the world?”

Therefore it has always been a relevant organisation, creating an international society, doing the heavy lifting in supporting independent states and dismantling racist regimes in Africa, creating a values-based organisation and now branching out and embracing the multiplicity and the depth and the diversity which the world offers.

The Commonwealth has always been a relevant organisation. In the time to come, it will continue to be even more of a relevant organisation.

I have said before that the Commonwealth was an organisation which was created in the last century but manufactured for the needs of the present one. I think that, moving forward, it will be of great global good.

We have globalised ourselves by accident; we now need to globalise ourselves by intent.

We have to keep on considering what role there is for us to play to create a harmonious world living comfortably with itself. Asia can lead in that task.

I conclude on this note of the great contribution that Asia has made historically, which it continues to make with the passage of time, and the great contribution which lies before it.

I thank you very much for your invitation to me to come and speak. There is nothing that a Secretary-General treasures more than a captive, quality audience that listens to the speaker at all times. Thank you very much.

ENDS