You will find a full list of our Conversation Starters below and by scrolling through the numerous pages at the bottom of this page. You can also navigate through different topics using the ‘Topics of Debate’ box on the right-hand side of the screen.
Post a comment under any of the Conversation starters to join in!
The largest-ever public consultation on the future of the Commonwealth concludes with a call for bold reform and greater investment if the 54-member association is to avoid being marginalised in an increasingly crowded marketplace. ‘An Uncommon Association, A Wealth of Potential’, the final report of the Commonwealth Conversation, is published today to coincide with annual Commonwealth Day celebrations around the world. Click here to download a summary of the final recommendations or the full report.
After eight months of consultation, today, on Commonwealth Day, we draw the Commonwealth Conversation to a close with the publication of our final report, ‘An Uncommon Association, A Wealth of Potential’, which sets out ten key recommendations. Click here to see a summary of these or, for those of you with a longer attention span, the full report.
We hope that you will find these to be a fair representation of all that you have told us over the last few months. We are enormously grateful for all of your contributions – this has been such a fun project because your posts have been so interesting, not to mention provocative! Continue reading…
On Thursday 26th November, the Royal Commonwealth Society facilitated a BBC World Debate in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. On the theme, ‘The Commonwealth at 60 – Does it Have a Future?’, the World Debate focused on many of the issues highlighted by participants in the Commonwealth Conversation. Watch it by clicking on the picture or follow this link. Continue reading…
Over 25,000 students have benefitted from Commonwealth Scholarships, and many more have gone to study in another Commonwealth country on their own. What are your experiences of studying around the Commonwealth? Continue reading…
President Nasheed of the Maldives thinks the Commonwealth should be procatively encouraging democracy and redefining international relations in respect to climate change. Continue reading…
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, Jamaica, Malaysia, and South Africa. The results are just in! Continue reading…
Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, former President of Zambia and Rt. Hon. Malcolm Fraser, former Prime Minster of Australia, said it was time that the Commonwealth engaged proactively with the new Zimbabwean government and welcomed her back into the Commonwealth family.
Fraser said that ‘if Zimbabwe was one of the Commonwealth’s greatest successes, it is also one of its greatest failures’. Kaunda said that the ‘road to recovery that we are now witnessing in Zimbabwe shows that she belongs to the Commonwealth’. Neither predicted that the country to which the Commonwealth gave birth in 1979 would end up leaving in 2003.
In interviews conducted by the Royal Commonwealth Society, Fraser and Kaunda said that the Commonwealth can achieve great things if only leaders would make better use of it and take it seriously as a forum to enact change.
Savage, a co-founder of the New Zealand Republican Movement has written the following contribution to the Commonwealth Conversation:
There is a belief perpetuated in Britain and other Commonwealth countries that the British Empire was of benefit to the world. The greed and racism are forgotten. The invasions, wars, political oppression and genocide are downplayed. The poverty and inequality it created are conveniently ignored.
The damage caused by Britain’s imperial project is not something many British people want to accept. The overall approach is a self-deluding calculation. Weighing up the positive and negative, the overall achievements were positive. The empire was a good thing.
This ongoing debate about the Empire’s historical merits is relevant to the commonwealth conversation. It reminds us of the attitudes and values the Commonwealth has been left to deal with. Self-delusion was an integral part of the imperial project. Institutional inequality and a commitment to democracy could only co-exist if elaborate self-delusions were maintained. Without the historical fictions and cultural myths, the contradictions inherent in the whole project would have been exposed. The fa?ade of civility and ‘progress’ would have crumbled.
In an interview with Commonwealth Radio, the Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, Stephenson King, described how Commonwealth membership is important to small states.
“Here in St Lucia, we value our membership highly. Not just for prestige, but for the kind of cooperation that exists between member territories, such as the advice that we receive, technical assistance and an opportunity to participate in the design of the modern world. The Commonwealth plays a major role in this. It is not influential within itself, but influential at the international level. We have a great opportunity to influence the direction of the world. Whether it is at the G20 or at the United Nations, our membership of 53 certainly goes a long way.”
Title: Commonwealth Conversation Event in New Zealand Location: Auckland Date: 2009-10-16
On Friday October 16, the Commonwealth Conversation visited One Tree Hill College, Auckland, where 40 students produced a video to be presented to Prime Minister John Key on the future of the Commonwealth.
This event was facilitated by the Auckland branch of the Royal Commonwealth Society.
Muttiah ‘Murali’ Muralitharan is the leading wicket-taker in Test cricket history and Sri Lanka’s greatest player of all time. He is also a dedicated humanitarian and philanthropist, serving as a trustee of the Foundation of Goodness, which seeks to help Sri Lanka’s rural poor.
In this exclusive interview for the Commonwealth Conversation, he talks about the power of sport to unite people irrespective of race and religionand what the Commonwealth could do to help Sri Lanka build a better future.
After an intense few weeks, we are delighted to publish the emerging findings of the Commonwealth Conversation. In this report we say that the Commonwealth must be bold to halt its declining profile, and to do this must focus on three Ps: Principles, Priorities and People. You can download Common What? here, and see the full press release below.
In a closing statement from the Port of Spain Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) yesterday, Commonwealth leaders recognised the work carried out by the Royal Commonwealth Society in the Commonwealth Conversation and called for the creation of an Eminent Persons’ Group to look at options for reform.
The Commonwealth Conversation is a global public consultation on the future of the Commonwealth which, so far, has engaged tens of thousands of people worldwide. Emerging findings were published last week ahead of the CHOGM in a report entitled ‘Common What?’. The report called for the Commonwealth to be bold in rebuilding its worryingly low profile, by focusing on three Ps: Principles, Priorities and People.
Although the Commonwealth Conversation came to an official end in March 2010, the work of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) set up to explore options for Commonwealth reform is just beginning in earnest…
In the midst of economic globalization and ecological confrontations, national identity can be most valued, perhaps, in many different situations, even essential.
In the middle of organizations such as the United Nations, and the European Union, and even international religious bodies such as the World Council of Churches, identity and questions about who we are as a people and how we are to be as citizens are critical for discernment, discretion and direction. And thus, citizenship, within the Commonwealth of Nations, could be a valuable a subject of debate and discussion. Continue reading…
As Commonwealth Election Observers prepare their final report on the Presidential Election held in Sri Lanka on 26th January 2010 there is a growing interest in what they will say, and what it will mean for the Commonwealth. Continue reading…
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’.Continue reading…
At the end of their meeting in Trinidad and Tobago in November 2009, Commonwealth leaders called for the establishment of an ‘Eminent Person’s Group’ to undertake an examination of options for reform. Read their full statement about this here. But who do you think should be in the Eminent Person’s Group? People who know lots about the Commonwealth, like former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser? Or people who know less about it, like businessman Richard Branson? Share your thoughts with us, and we’ll pass them on…
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Weakening Commonwealth needs dose of ambition
Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, former President of Zambia and Rt. Hon. Malcolm Fraser, former Prime Minster of Australia, said it was time that the Commonwealth engaged proactively with the new Zimbabwean government and welcomed her back into the Commonwealth family.
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