Amid dissatisfaction on the part of the host government, Sri Lanka, in the face of criticisms of its human rights record, the Commonwealth met last week at another of its biennial meetings, the last of which was held in Austraila. These conferences are normally designed to review international developments, assess the functioning of the institution itself, and to consider global initiatives largely concerned with its developing state members which constitute its majority, and with circumstances likely to affect all members but over which none individually can provide solutions.
So, in addition to its general survey of international political developments, particularly those concerning disputes between states already being continually considered by the United Nations, the conference reviewed progress on issues like the ability of the international community to meet targets aimed at coping with slowing the pace of climate change; the requirements for states achieving the Millenium Development Goals; and the issue of differences in capabilities among developing countries for minimizing the effects and limitations of economic and other vulnerabilities as they pursue economic growth and development.
The Commonwealth Forum has also tended to be seen as valuable in being able to sustain an engagement among countries of varying levels of development, and stimulating concentrated attention from the industrialized states to the problems arising from differences in resources that can limit the ability of some states to maintain their central focus on finding ways and means of pursuing their development programmes.
At this conference the sustained concentration on small state limitations has given Caribbean countries a continuing forum for maintaining international attention, particularly in this period of deep recession induced in part by the wider international recession. The fate, over the last year or so, of Cyprus, a country which had been showing much promise in its pursuit of development in the context of the European economic environment, has brought home the point.
Cyprus’ recent problem has, no doubt, also helped to maintain an appropriate focus on what the communique refers to as the “unique structural challenges and inherent vulnerabilities” affecting small states. And it further permits our states, along with others, to maintain their insistence on what is sometimes referred to as the need for “special consideration” in the face of external as well as domestic vulnerabilities, a focus which can sustain wider small state alliances on the development issue.
In addition some states have continued to utilize the forum as a useful diplomatic instrument for sustaining attention on international problems arising from their geopolitical situation, as they seek to ensure the continuation of international agreements made in earlier periods. And in this connection, the conference came at a good time for Guyana, as rumblings from Venezuela are again in the air; and also for Belize, which has had the opportunity to indicate what seems to be a withdrawal by Guatemala on commitments made in respect of the Guatemalan claim.
As in the past when there have been controversies relating to particular member states, the conference seems to have been able to avoid a concentration on specific issues that might have overshadowed the concerns of other countries. This can even be said to be the case in the matter of the controversy over human rights as it pertained to Sri Lanka. Certainly, the President of the country was insistent in seeking to assure countries that there has been some legitimacy for the actions taken, and for what has seemed to other countries to be a reversal of the country’s post-independence maintenance of orthodox democratic and constitutional systems and procedures.
But the Sri Lankan regime will certainly have felt the increasing possibilities of isolation and not only from the fact of the non-attendance at the conference of a normally sympathetic state like Canada. But it is also probably the case that the presence of Britain, with Prime Minister Cameron’s forceful focus on the need for a reversal of current policies limiting human rights and democratic representation, would probably have given the opponents of the regime a greater satisfaction and wider international publicity.
But what would appear to have been more pointed was the absence of the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from the conference, emphasizing the point of the interdependence of countries in the Indian Ocean region.
It was certainly the case that the Congress Party wanted to take no chances where alienating citizens of Tamil origin in India in its electoral season was concerned, but the Prime Minister’s decision also forcefully indicated the need for the Sri Lanka regime to take into account a wider concern among countries in the area over the negative spillover effects from the behaviour of one or other country in close proximity and with a make-up of diverse ethnic or religious groups. And the absence from the meeting of the Prime Minister of Mauritius will certainly have reinforced this point.
From the perspective of the recent decision of Caricom Heads of Government to take on board the issue of the need for reparations relating to the African diaspora in the Caribbean, observers will note that the conference gave recognition to the December 2012 United Nations General Assembly Resolution proclaiming the International Decade for People of African Descent ‒ Recognition, Justice and Development. This reflects a widening of the proposed diplomacy of support relevant to this issue, about which more will undoubtedly be heard from our side of the Commonwealth.
