UK Foreign Secretary welcomes a Conversation about the Future of the Commonwealth
Posted by ZoeWare - 19/07/09 at 10:07 pmWatch UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs David Miliband emphasise the importance of engaging with the Commonwealth’s two billion people about the future of their association.
Q: Foreign Secretary, you’ve got lots of foreign policy challenges on your table. Where does the Commonwealth add value to you? (Danny Sriskandarajah, Director of the Royal Commonwealth Society)
Miliband: I think the Commonwealth is a unique soft power institution. We live in a world of shared risks, where the problems of terrorism, climate change and instability spread from one country to another, from one region to another. One of the problems of the modern world is the lack of effective strong international institutions. In the main those are going to be institutions with formal power, but I’m a great believer that you need soft power as well as hard power and the Commonwealth, by virtue of its unique membership – north, east, south and west, all races, all religions, all regions – I think can be an effective soft power institution, that at the minimum helps to spread understanding and at its best will promote common action.
Q: So what’s your interest in the Commonwealth Conversation? Why launch it?
Miliband: Well there are two billion people out there who are members of the Commonwealth family, and I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job at engaging them, talking to them about the future of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth was founded on the basis on strong shared values: it does have a potentially unique role in bringing cultures and countries together, but it needs to prove its worth with real focus, real drive and real determination in some important areas. I think that can’t just be done by the elites of the Commonwealth, it needs to be driven forward by a sense of eagerness and engagement on a rather wider scale. That’s why I welcome not just the substance of the Conversation that we’re going to have but the process as well.
Q: What do you hope that the Commonwealth Conversation itself achieves?
Miliband: I think at the end of this the Commonwealth needs to have more focus, more drive and more engagement. It needs more people to know what it’s about, it needs to have a stronger sense itself of what it’s about and it needs to have a clear view of how its going to engage with its membership.
Q: This is a public consultation but do you have a personal view on what you think the Commonwealth should be focusing on? What are the sorts of issues and what are the sorts of key areas that the Commonwealth should be focusing on in the 21st century?
Miliband: Well I think it’s always good to go back to your strengths and then ask how you deploy them. Big strength number one is the values of the Commonwealth. So I think my starting point would be that the first priority I would highlight is the ability of the Commonwealth to turn its fine words about democracy and the rule of law into action in all of its countries, so that’s a USP.
The second big strength is the breadth of the Commonwealth – the big issue that affects every part of the world whatever your race or your religion, for me is climate change. So I would secondly put climate change up there as a big issue, as a big priority.
Thirdly, you’ve got to ask yourself about the problems of misunderstanding that exist around the world – what’s going to be the answer to that? Well, you may defend nations with armies but you advance a civilisation through education. And so I think that educational mission is very, very important for the Commonwealth.
But my top three aren’t necessarily the top three that are going to end up at the end of this Conversation. And I think that’s an important part of this process and I hope that there’ll be challenge for those ideas. But where I do think we’re right is to say that unless an organisation has focus it will not have the distinctive pull it needs in the modern world.
Q: And finally, how useful will the findings from this Conversation be to you and the Prime Minister when you head to Trinidad and Tobago for the Commonwealth summit at the end of the year?
Miliband: Well the truth is we don’t know, we don’t know how useful they?ll be – that partly depends on how many people engage. If it doesn’t engage enough people then the use is reduced: if it’s not significantly challenging then the use is reduced. But I hope and I anticipate that we’ll be able to go, the Prime Minister and I, to the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference armed with a greater sense of both the misperceptions and the anticipations that people have for the Commonwealth.
The affection, I think, is there and we’ve got to turn that affection into a sense of commitment and engagement. Not for reasons of nostalgia, although nostalgia has its place, but I think more importantly for reasons of common future. So that’s why I think the idea ‘more common, more wealth’, is not a bad place to start and hopefully end this conversation.
Category : The Commonwealth's Relevance
Tags: Commonwealth Conversation, conversation, FCO, Foreign Secretary, future, Miliband
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July 23rd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
I wholeheartedly agree that there is a need for more people to know what the Commonwealth is about. There is a high level of ignorance in the UK. It would be good for the government to take a lead, not simply by having the Commonwealth on the national curriculum but by strongly encouraging schools to make their students aware of what the Commonwealth is. For far too long the Commonwealth has been low in the list of priorities of governments, of both complexions.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:58 am
We need to have organisations of good quality. Improvement of quality is very crucial when we’re afflicted with intractable intrastate conflicts, increasing population, decreasing resources and increasing pollution.
Increasing the activities is not necessarily improving quality. Continuous assessment and improvement must be a bulit-in factor. Dedicated leaders willing to improve themselves and their own countries will be a great asset.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Wil the Commonwealth comment on the ongoing oppression of Tamils in Sri Lanka?
While tens of thousands of IDPs in the East have been ”settled” against their wishes in dangerous areas by the armed forces, ICRC was forced to close down all its four offices in the East.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been reporting of restricted access for aid agencies to the camps in the North and a few days ago Amnesty International told an audience at a meeting in London the aid agencies have not been allowed to speak with the detainees(nearly 280,000 IDPs compulsorily detained) in the camps and are unable to make needs assessment. Holding the IDPs compulsorily is illegal. Not allowing the aid agencies full access and not allowing them to speak with the detainees is against the internationally accepted norms on IDPs.
It has been reported that some detainees are ”released” by ransom. Corruption has been ahuge problem in all areas of administration in Sri Lanka for decades.
Hundreds of families are being transferred from Vavuniya camps to Jaffna, Mannar and Trincomalee camps and the government has been telling the donors it has been ”releasing” the IDPs from Vavuniya.
Unicef spokesman has been expelled because he expressed his concern about the horrible conditions in the camps. Two more UN officials have been warned for ”behaving” similarly.
Recently the actions of the UN Secretary General on Sri Lanka have been questioned.
Tamils have been trampled for six decades.
The Commonwealth countries unashamedly keep quiet about this. Decades ago we used to speak about United Nations Organisation. Now we speak only about the UN.
The world has yet to evolve as to how it helps the oppressed. But then the planet may not survive that long.
November 19th, 2009 at 8:29 am
Will Rt Hon Miliband remind the other members of CMAG why and how CMAG i. came to give Sri Lanka a third consecutive term in it in spite of its principle to limit membership to two consecutive terms and ii. failed to take up the horrendous and persistent violations of international human rights and humanitarian law?
An Eyewitness account in Groundviews yesterday tells how IDPs are dumped in war-ravaged areas without any help. ICRC and MSF and other aid agencies have been asking the Sri lankan government to let them help the IDPs.
The last six months of oppressing the Tamils is an abating continuation of the oppression of the previous sixty years.
November 19th, 2009 at 8:32 am
Sorry, I meant to say unabating oppression.