The Commonwealth Conversation

This year’s speaker at the Commonwealth Foundation Commonwealth Lecture, Terry Waite, humanitarian and former hostage, talks to the RCS about climate change, education and the Commonwealth’s relevance.

Most of the countries of the Commonwealth still criminalize sexual acts between consenting adults of the same sex. This needs to change says Joel Simpson, Co-Chairperson of Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination.

A Gambian journalist living in exile, who was forced to flee his country in July 2007 after being chased by the country?s intelligence services.

On the day Fiji is fully suspended from the Commonwealth, Dr. Mere Tuisalalo Samisoni, legal elected member of Lami Open Consituency in 2006, gives his thoughts:

Kaye Whiteman, a writer and journalist and former Director of Information at the Commonwealth Secretariat says more needs to be done to prevent abuse of media freedoms in the Commonwealth.

A number of member countries are not measuring up to the Commonwealth principles. The regime in The Gambia, for instance, is extremely harsh with little attention paid to human rights and no freedom of expression.

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.