Lord David Howell, Deputy Conservative Leader in the House of Lords and Chair of the 1996 Foreign Affairs Committee report on the Future of the Commonwealth, stresses how everyone seems to be noticing the Commonwealth except in the UK. His article gives some ‘Royal Foreign Policy Advice’.

Has anyone noticed how, in the evolving global order of things, the Commonwealth is climbing steadily up the agenda of importance, relevance and potential? The Queen has certainly noticed, and devoted half her Christmas Day broadcast to explaining how the Commonwealth was ‘in lots of ways the face of the future’. Her husband has also noticed, and through his support for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conference (next one due in 2013) is responding precisely to HM’s call for the Commonwealth to gather young people together to ‘bring creativity and innovation’ to global challenges, as well as practical solutions..

The President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy also seems to have noticed, because it was he who turned up at the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Trinidad and Tobago to seek stronger support from the Commonwealth network  for his international aims. And so has the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, also attending the Trinidad gathering.

So also have leading Japanese politicians, who now make regular enquiries about Commonwealth events and ask to attend them. So have a lengthening queue of smaller states applying for membership, of which the latest to be admitted is cricket-playing, and now English-learning, Rwanda.

So have a whole raft of international business investors who are moving growing volumes of capital and technology from one part of the Commonwealth to another – e.g from Canada to the Caribbean, from India to South Africa, from Australia to Malaysia – in a criss-cross pattern of south-south capital flows which are replacing the old north-south stereotypes.  

But come nearer home and things look rather different. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) publications studiously downgrade the development of the Commonwealth network in their international priorities, putting the UN and the EU top of the list, and forgetting the ‘C’ in their nameplate.

For the Tories, William Hague has been making increasingly strong statements about the emerging Commonwealth soft power network and its growing significance for British interests, but Hague is not yet in the Government and has yet to contend with the blinkered disdain of the Whitehall foreign policy establishment.

What is it about this colossal trans-continental network, covering almost a third of the human race, that excites the wider world and yet attracts so little interest in London?

First there is history and second there is suspicion of rivalry with other current objectives.

The history problem is that with the end of empire the Commonwealth came to be seen a  sort of compensation, a Britain-centred club or talking shop  for remembering the old days, along with plenty of post-colonial grumbles, a touch of nostalgia and not much else. It was simply not noticed that out of the old chrysalis was emerging an entirely new entity, composed not of  mostly struggling low-income states but of some of the world’s most dynamic and fastest–growing economies and markets, and with booming India, not  Britain as its centrepiece. Nor was it noticed –and still in many quarters has not yet been – that in the information age the subtle commonalties and interfaces of Commonwealth membership were becoming just as important to British national interests and security as traditional hard power deployments – possibly more so.

The other hang-up – that somehow giving a more central place in UK foreign policy to the Commonwealth network distracts from Britain’s other priorities on the world stage, notably effective membership of the EU, of the Atlantic Alliance and the UN, reveals even weaker understanding of the new international architecture. There is no conflict at all between being good Europeans, with strong commitment to regional cooperation and interests, and stronger Commonwealth ties. Perhaps there was once, way back when the UK first joined the European Community, but that was many yesterdays ago in a world of different trade patterns, different communication patterns and different distributions of power.

On the contrary, the UK might well be doing rather better in the unending manoeuvres and tussles over the EU’s future between integrationists and decentralisers, (of which the Lisbon Treaty is only one pause in a constant struggle), if it had put Commonwealth network interests more vigorously to the fore. Besides, the EU and the Commonwealth are two quite different components of the 21^st century global system – the one seeking to consolidate regional bargaining power and solidarity of broadly similar cultures, the other linking together in a fascinating mosaic of formal and informal ties and associations a far wider grouping of powers, cultures and philosophies. (The last UK Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report on The Future of the Commonwealth, counted 202 non-governmental Commonwealth organizations and 46 official ones).

Is the expanding Commonwealth network treading on UN toes? Again, the answer is that it offers a different kind of platform on which nations can cooperate – and one which is more friendly and intimate, especially for smaller nations. It should be seen as a necessary 21^st century add-on or reinforcement to the world’s 20^th century institutions. 

The weaknesses of the UN system were on agonising display at Copenhagen. The strengths of the Commonwealth system were very visible, for anyone who cared to study them, when they addressed climate issues, security and peace-keeping issues, development dilemmas, common problems from the financial turmoil fall-out and a host of other immediate challenges at their recent Trinidad gathering. When it comes to resolving the core conflict of the age between sustainable future growth and defeating present poverty – which more or less sunk the Copenhagen gathering –  the dialogue between today’s and tomorrow’s Commonwealth leaders seems to offer a distinctly better – and happier – forum for the key reconciliation of purposes the world now requires.

We are seeing here the new international system in action. And if the question is ‘what’s in it for the UK?’, the answer is that it is increasingly good for business. As the balance of global power shifts eastwards and outwards the modern Commonwealth network now links us into some of the world’s fastest expanding markets and largest sources of savings and capital investment, at a time when the limping West badly needs both.  

The Commonwealth is indeed, in the Queen’s phrase, ‘the face of the future’. But are the Queen’s Ministers and subjects listening?

The debate was moderated by the BBC presenter Zeinab Badawi, with a panel comprising David Miliband, UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs; Mmasekgoa Masire-Mwamba, Deputy Secretary-General of the Commonwealth; Stephen Chan, Professor of International Relations at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies; and Dipu Moni, Bangladeshi Foreign Minister.

The one hour programme was broadcast seven times over the weekend of 28-29 November and carried on BBC World Service Radio to an estimated worldwide audience of 100 million.

What do you think about the debate? Leave your comments below.

H.M. The Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, highlighted the Commonwealth’s Relevance in its 60th Anniversary Year during her 2009 Christmas Broadcast.  Her speech also featured video interviews with delegates at the Commonwealth Youth Forum in Trinidad and Tobago.

It is sixty years since the Commonwealth was created and today, with more than a billion of its members under the age of 25, the organisation remains a strong and practical force for good. Recently I attended the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Trinidad and Tobago and heard how important the Commonwealth is to young people. New communication technologies allow them to reach out to the wider world and share their experiences and viewpoints. For many, the practical assistance and networks of the Commonwealth can give skills, lend advice and encourage enterprise.

It is inspiring to learn of some of the work being done by these young people, who bring creativity and innovation to the challenges they face. It is important to keep discussing issues that concern us all – there can be no more valuable role for our family of nations.

I have been closely associated with the Commonwealth through most of its existence. The personal and living bond I have enjoyed with leaders, and with people the world over, has always been more important in promoting our unity than symbolism alone. The Commonwealth is not an organisation with a mission. It is rather an opportunity for its people to work together to achieve practical solutions to problems.

In many aspects of our lives, whether in sport, the environment, business or culture, the Commonwealth connection remains vivid and enriching. It is, in lots of ways, the face of the future. And with continuing support and dedication, I am confident that this diverse Commonwealth of nations can strengthen the common bond that transcends politics, religion, race and economic circumstances.

“The Commonwealth Games are the most redundant and peculiar of sporting events.”

Amid rumours that some of the worlds best athletes, like Jamaican sprint sensation Usain Bolt, will not be competing in Delhi, we recall American Olympic champion Michael Johnson’s reflection on the 2006 event:

Too many people try to put these championships on a par with the World Championships or the Olympics but they are not – never have been, never will be. Just ask the athletes, they know because they have to compete against the best in the world. I think that truth gets lost on the British media, the fans and the athletes themselves because they hardly compete outside of their country. But to have a presence on the international stage you have to compete against the best in the world. When a British – or Australian for that matter – athlete does well, people want to make it like an Olympic or World medal but it is just not the same level.

Will you watch the Commonwealth Games if stars like Usain Bolt are not present? Or is giving smaller nations a chance to take the limelight a good thing?

I think of the modern Commonwealth as a happy accident. If it did not exist it would neither be necessary nor perhaps possible to invent it. Not all member-states value Commonwealth membership for the same reasons or to the same extent. But neither of these truisms are a problem.

Following the transition from empire and the end of apartheid, the association is searching for a meaning. The ‘democratic world order’ thought possible with the advent of The End of History, the Washington Consensus and articulated in the Commonwealth via the Harare Principles – has not yet materialised.

At CHOGMs the Heads of Government review the world situation at length. Their views on world affairs feature prominently in the Communiqués, which invariably record the Commonwealth’s solidarity with Cyprus in its dispute with Turkey and with Belize in rejecting Venezuelan territorial claims, but by convention remain silent about the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan.

CMAG – the body set up to deal with serious or persistent violations of the Commonwealth’s fundamental values – may be frustrating, but it takes the Commonwealth a step further than other international organisations. Similarly the Secretary General’s “good offices” are certainly commendable. However, the association has its well recorded limitations. Indeed, non-interference in the internal affairs of its members, even if they flaunt the association’s fundamental values, is very much the hallmark of post-colonial Commonwealth relations.

This leaves us to find the value of the Commonwealth in its ‘framework for informal cooperation between members’ and through ‘the mutual exercise of soft power’. From this point of view, the recent election of a distinguished Indian diplomat to the post of Secretary-General is evidence of the Commonwealth’s profile in the emerging world order.

At a time when India seems set to play a prominent international role, it is not only significant but encouraging that the Indian Government should have regarded the Commonwealth as an appropriate association within which to project its growing influence. This happy accident of history may now have found a new role.

Martin Mulloy is the English-Speaking Union’s Director of Education. The English-Speaking Union is an international charity founded in 1918 to promote international understanding and friendship through the use of the English language.

Transcript:

The English-Speaking Union promotes international understanding through the use of the English language. As we know, one of the unifying aspects of the Commonwealth is this common use of English. In practical terms, how does this use of English unite people from very different Commonwealth countries?

Well, I always think of English now as not so much a language; in fact, there’s a famous quote from a Foreign Minister in Germany who said that English isn’t a language as Portuguese, Greek or Spanish indeed is a language, English has become something more, it is the lingua franca for operating all across the world, and I think it’s just a tremendous vehicle to allow people from diverse cultures and countries to be able to speak to each other.

Newly-admitted to the Commonwealth is Rwanda, as of last week, following in the footsteps of Mozambique, which speaks Portuguese. Do you think this dilutes something essential to the Commonwealth?

No, the very opposite. I have referred to English as a means of communication, and we do know nowadays that a great deal of English is spoken by countries and people for whom English is not a first language, because of its power as a lingua franca. But there is another aspect; I think that perhaps countries like Rwanda, and indeed Mozambique, and I understand there are other non English-speaking countries possibly joining in the future, and I think they join the Commonwealth for a range of reasons, and one of them may be that perhaps countries are like people; they want to belong to communities, and communities which perhaps reflect a set of interests that they feel is important. So, Rwanda joining the Commonwealth is something I see as something positive. The bigger the embrace, the more common the interests, the better. I see this as a positive move.

Finally, a recent British Council study has found that less and less Indians are speaking English- obviously the largest and most populous country in the Commonwealth- and, in fact, there are more English-speakers in China than there are in India. With a rising India, and a rising China, is the use of English really still that important?

I think it most certainly is. The key issue here is the aspect of English as a lingua franca. A Chinese businessman speaking to, perhaps, a Brazilian businessman will be speaking English, more than likely, as the common language of communication. I’ll come back to India in a second. You mentioned China; China is also promoting the use of Mandarin, it has launched, I believe, ‘Confucius Centres’ throughout the world to promote the use of Mandarin. But it takes many, many years for this to happen; I mean English has had several centuries, for a whole host of reasons- political, imperial, business and media, web communications now- to gain an ascendancy. It will take an equivalent for perhaps Mandarin to have that same sort of currency in the world. The same could apply to India, and Indian languages. I understand that there are periods when a country wants to promote its own national identity and culture, and perhaps views English as eroding that. But, equally, English is a part of India, it is an official language, and the question is not how Indians will communicate internally, within India, but how they will communicate externally, with the world at large. English exists as a global entity, as I said at the beginning of this, it’s almost more than a language, in its role. So I don’t see this as a bad thing or a good thing, simply as a natural cycle.

This conversation-starter was provided by UNICEF UK.

In 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) became the first legally binding international convention to affirm human rights for all children. While great progress has been made on child rights in the past 20 years, much work remains to be done. The Commonwealth has an important part to play in ensuring that children’s rights are upheld and the CRC is implemented to create a Commonwealth fit for children.

In the words of Dan Seymour, Chief of the Gender and Rights Unit at UNICEF headquarters in New York “That the world fails to respect the rights of its children – even to deny that children have rights – is clear in the alarming numbers of children who die of preventable causes, who do not attend school, who are left abandoned when their parents succumb to AIDS, or who are subjected to exploitation and abuse against which they are unable to protect themselves. We cannot claim that the Convention has achieved what needs to be achieved. Rather, it has provided all of us with an essential foundation to play our part in changing what needs to be changed….This 20th anniversary of the CRC reminds us, most of all, of what we have left to do”.

To find out what your government can do to advance the principles set forth by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, visit this link.

This conversation-starter is written by Anna Feuchtwang, Chief Executive of EveryChild.

On the 20^th November 2009, the U.N. General Assembly welcomed by consensus the Guidelines on the Alternative Care of Children, exactly 20 years on from the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The Guidelines provide urgently needed guidance on how governments can develop family- based alternatives to institutional care and provide services to help keep vulnerable families together.

It will be essential for the Commonwealth to encourage its member states, which have all ratified the UNCRC, to develop action plans for the full implementation of these guidelines which involve the participation of children, families and communities.  Such action plans should not narrowly focus on child- care reform, but extend to ensure, firstly, that children without parental care are considered in social protection programmes, and, secondly,  the delivery of basic services. 

The guidelines are an essential enhancement to the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, particularly in light of the findings of a new report by EveryChild that reveals there are at least 24 million children in the world who are growing up without parental care and, due to the global recession, their number is rising rapidly. It is time to recognise the right of every child in the Commonwealth to grow up in a loving family environment.

In an article for The Round Table published in October 2001, Gott thinks the Commonwealth should encourage us to see imperial history through the eyes of its former subjects. He claims the current British government comments rashly on developments in other Commonwealth countries because it retains an air of empire.

He thinks the British education system should emphasise multiple imperial narratives, ranging from the dominant British narrative of imperial triumphalism to the narratives of aboriginal rebels.

He concludes that the countries of today’s Commonwealth must draw on a range of experiences in their historical teaching. The Empire will never go away, and its legacy continues to create havoc in places as diverse as Israel, Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka. It is important we fully understand its impact on all.

What are your own experiences of learning about the Empire and its legacy?

You can read the full article, free of charge, here, and feel free to leave any comments below

Gott, Richard, What can the Commonwealth learn from its history?, The Round Table Vol. 90 No. 362, 673-677, October 2001]