The Commonwealth Secretary General talks about the evolution of the association’s core values over the past 40 years.
Global: The 1971 Singapore Declaration was the Commonwealth’s first attempt to set down a statement of its principles. How important was the decision for the Commonwealth at the time?
Kamalesh Sharma: It was not only a landmark decision but it was a kind of starting block for the Commonwealth as an organisation that collectively advocates and espouses political values that its members want to live by. It was of the utmost importance.
It is lost a little bit in history, that event. It took eight days to frame that declaration – eight days of what could be described as differences, and even acrimony at times. President Kenneth Kaunda had brought with him the substance of this declaration. Many of the values which we now build upon – the rule of law, democracy, human rights (though the phrase “human rights” was not used, implicitly it is there in the terminology of the time as “personal freedom under the law”) and the importance of women – all of these are there in the Singapore Declaration.
The Commonwealth has reaffirmed and revised its guiding principles on a number of occasions – most notably in the Harare Declaration of 1991. Apart from setting the ground rules, has the Singapore Declaration been a point of reference?
Yes, the Singapore Declaration was a starting point and we added to it in the Harare Declaration, which is more comprehensive. We’ve been lifting our act every time. There are the Latimer House principles [2003], which talk about the separation of powers between the three pillars of government and the Aberdeen principles [2005] on local self-governance. It’s not as if we’ve revised the older one, we’ve built upon it. It’s a foundation upon which we build more and more as time passes. Now finally, we have the Affirmation of Measures and Principles of Port of Spain [2009] which encapsulates and contains all of these.
The Singapore Declaration did not establish a mechanism to enforce adherence of its principles. What implications do you think this had for its overall effectiveness?
More recently, the sentiment has built that there has to be scrutiny and there has to be oversight of these principles collectively, and in 1995 we created the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) at Millbrook, which built on the Harare Declaration. In fact, this was unique as there was no organisation then that had the mechanism, created within itself, whereby it could pronounce on the performance of its own members and, in the case of what they called “serious and persistent violation”, also suspend them from membership, which has happened repeatedly. Right now we are also building on CMAG so that it can do much more.
How can CMAG’s role be strengthened?
I think by having a more positive optic in engaging with member states, that it shouldn’t be seen primarily as a censorious or chastising body, but as a body which proffers a helping hand to member states in what it does, and looks at the more systemic, serious and persistent matters in a constructive way. This is what the leaders have to consider as they go along. The leaders have given the mandate, at the last CHOGM, that CMAG should travel in this direction. First, they will have to approve what the new guidelines are going to be.
When the Singapore Declaration was proclaimed in 1971 the Commonwealth had only 31 member states, and although the UK’s influence was beginning to wane, the association was still very much linked with and bound by the idea of British colonialism. How would you say the Commonwealth has changed during the intervening years?
The Commonwealth today is a unique body. It is unique in its membership. It has within it some of the old industrial countries, significant emerging economies – societies like India, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore and others – and some of the largest countries of the world – India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nigeria. It [also] has the smallest states of the Pacific and the Caribbean.
The importance of this composition is that what the Commonwealth does for itself, as a result of this composition, radiates to the other parts of the world. And so the Commonwealth has been able to globalise its values in a very significant way.
Progressively, what used to be referred to sometimes as the British Commonwealth is no longer the case. In fact, people are looking much more to a country like India playing its role more significantly, as it emerges.
The question of racial discrimination – especially the form in which it was practised in Southern Africa – was perhaps the most difficult problem facing the Commonwealth in 1971. What would you say are the equivalent major issues, perhaps of an ethical or moral nature, that the Commonwealth has to grapple with today?
Now the big question before us is the globalisation of values. All kinds of things are globalised, but what you want is a globalisation of wisdom so that everybody agrees “this is what we all want”. In that sense, the role of the Commonwealth continues to be important because of its composition and the fact that it has, in the past, displayed a genius for always being able to pick up that which was collective and positive, rather than collective and divisive. It has a huge track record of being able to pursue a globally positive agenda, which is a collective agenda. As of the items right now, I would suggest inclusiveness, in global governance and in everything we do. In fact we have a declaration, called the Marlborough House Statement, which emphasises this. The time has now gone when we could look at the world as a formation in different tiers because the consequences of failure anywhere are visited immediately upon the whole world. We should never forget that it is not only the civil society that is globalising itself but also the uncivil society. Of the global concerns, there is a series of them: the position of women; anti-terrorism; the place of youth in the world – the world is getting progressively younger and younger and we need global initiatives to get to grips with this; the conquest of disease as a global pursuit; and illiteracy. All of these are new challenges right now, 21st century challenges of great importance, because we have to find solutions for these issues before this century has run its course. The perspective of the Commonwealth is that all outcomes have to be collective outcomes of benefit to everybody, that salvation has to be universal, that everyone has an equal right to a place in the sun. This continues to be even more important because of the kind of pressures I’ve already mentioned.
The term “human rights” is not used in the Singapore Declaration but it does appear twice in the Harare Declaration. What value does the Commonwealth place upon the respect for human rights?
Everything we do has a rights base. By that we mean that the ultimate litmus test of our contribution has to be the value of the life of the citizen of the Commonwealth. It [the Commonwealth] is an intergovernmental organisation but at the same time it moves in parallel with civil society. The intergovernmental part was created at the same time as the Commonwealth Foundation, which should express directly the views of the people to the government.
Specifically on human rights, we have created a human rights unit. It assists our member states in practical terms, and in capacity building. It is a very sensitive area. What you say to yourself, in terms of what you must do, is very different from others telling you what you must do, even if it is actually the same thing. You must come to the conclusions about yourself because no one should be in a position of being morally superior to anyone else. So we work with countries and governments to strengthen them, to tell them how they should be monitoring human rights. That’s our primary contribution.
We assist [member] countries in making their submissions to the Universal Periodic Review of human rights and we are ready to work with them to help them show real advances. We help them subscribe to key human rights treaties and conventions. The problem with countries may be a practical one where certain obligations have to be undertaken in domestic legislation and institutions.
We help countries to do that. We help with specific requirements, like police training, areas that are particularly weak in many countries, the absence of redress for citizens, the right to information, depending on what the country needs to work on. So it’s a human rights advancing organisation and it has made very significant contributions.
The last point is the political context in which all of this is done. All of this assumes democracy in some form because if you don’t believe in the spirit of democracy, why should you believe in all of this? But we are not a prescriptive organisation; we don’t say this is how you should run things. If you are a monarchy and people by and large are happy to be run in this way, the political evolution in that monarchy will have to be left to them – we are strategic partners for them.
So we assist countries to move up the ladder as far as democratic performance is concerned. Countries work with us on the basis of trust and we leave it to people to deduce what we’ve done because in many countries we are only halfway and there is a long way to go. It is a journey. Democracy is not a station that you arrive at but a constant journey that you are engaged in.
