Commonwealth Secretary-General supports the Conversation
Posted by ZoeWare - 19/07/09 at 11:07 pmWatch the Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma as he welcomes the Commonwealth Conversation and looks forward to the new ideas that it will bring. Q: Are you supportive of the Commonwealth Conversation and, if so, why?
Sharma: Yes, because it is extremely important that a lot of discourse takes place about the Commonwealth, so that it is no longer seen as working along rigid paths or something belonging to the past but something which belongs to the future, and where the future is being shaped through this discourse, about expectations and possibilities.
Q: Why should people around the Commonwealth take part in this Conversation?
Sharma: Because it is a genuinely people based organisation. In 1965 when the Commonwealth Secretariat came up, the Commonwealth Foundation, which would represent civil society, even though the word probably didn’t exist then, also came up. Subsequently we have the Commonwealth business council. When our summits or CHOGMs take place we have all of them present, people’s forum, youth forum, it is a people’s organisation and partly also intergovernmental of course, because the governments must take the important decisions, but these conversations, by definition, are people level conversations and therefore very much at the heart of the Commonwealth.
Q: Finally, what would you like to see come out of the Commonwealth Conversation?
Sharma: I think new ideas concerning relevance, which you have already referred to. How expectations can shape the work of the Commonwealth, what are the many ways in which its core strengths, which are democracy and development, can be shaped in today’s time. And particularly what is the additional value that this organisation, and the world, must bring to the two most important components of the global population, which are its women and its youth.
What do you think about what the Secretary-General said? Post a comment to let the world know!
Category : My Commonwealth
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July 16th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
You can see more videos by the Secretary-General on his Commonwealth Secretariat video page – http://www.thecommonwealth.org/Internal_NoCols/191183/210826/video/
July 24th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Dear Secretary General
Please encourage your members to give more attention nationally to deep version of democracy and human rights so that the Commonwealth can become a better organisation. Members must be able to prod each other to put principles into practice nationally so that the Commonwealth will have better say in international affairs.
We have too many intrastate conflicts and too little is being done by organisations with members who shun confronting atrocious human rights violations in other countries fearing that they may be next.
July 25th, 2009 at 9:10 am
UN Human Rights Council has been unable to do anything about genocide in countries that are UN members even after we have seen UDHR60 and R2P.
How and what can the Commonwealth do to do better, Sir?
Are we going to keep saying ‘Never Again’ forever, Sir?