The Commonwealth Conversation

Considerable rumours circulated worldwide this week about the imminence of Fiji’s full suspension from the Commonwealth at the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) held today, Friday 31st July, in London. However at the meeting, CMAG’s 9 Foreign Ministers agreed to give the Fijian regime 1 more month to reactivate the President?s Political Dialogue Forum process, facilitated by the Commonwealth and the United Nations.

The writer and journalist Kaye Whiteman has asked some provocative questions of the Commonwealth Conversation and how it will address the issue of media freedom.

The Rwandan government is accused of having a “very poor” human rights record. Should this dent its Commonwealth membership ambitions?

Iain Hunter, a Canadian journalist writing for the Times Colonist, asks why so many of us will react with a yawn to discussion of the Commonwealth.

The debate about what the Commonwealth should be doing on Sri Lanka is a very hot one. What do you think about it?

It looks like our polling results have caused a bit of a stir in Australia.

Today I had an opinion piece published in the Globe and Mail, a Canadian Newspaper, about what our poll results mean there…

UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs David Miliband and RCS Director Danny Sriskandarajah launch the Commonwealth Conversation at the RCS, 20 July 2009, London

Seven opinion polls around the Commonwealth kick off the Conversation.
Before we started a big conversation about the future of the Commonwealth, we at the RCS thought we’d first find out what people know and think about it. And wanting to be thorough, we commissioned nationally representative surveys in seven countries: Australia, Canada, Great Britain, India, [...]

Watch the Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma as he welcomes the Commonwealth Conversation and looks forward to the new ideas that it will bring.