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Go
to Home Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen
I know some of you have heard me say this before, but I want to start by noting that this building in Northumberland Avenue has a very special significance for me. It was here, some 43 years ago, that I began my Commonwealth journey. And before I go on, let me say that it is not here, all those years later, that I am ending it ! Here, in 1961, I was interviewed, still well short of being 18 tender years of age, by Voluntary Service Overseas. I came here, having, like many similar aged sixth formers, been inspired by a talk at my school given by the founder of VSO, the late and very great Alec Dickson, a man whose compassion, vision and charisma were to continue to inspire me when I worked for him some years later at Community Service Volunteers. Indeed, they are qualities and ideals that continue to inspire me today. And Alec, incidentally, also taught me a great deal of what I know about public speaking, including of course, the art of opening remarks. The one of his I remember best is this: after fulsome introductory remarks by one’s Chair, one rises to one’s feet and begins: “Well, Mr Chairman, after an introduction like that, I can hardly wait to hear myself speak!……….”
But to go back, my interview here led to a VSO year as a just-over-18 years old teacher in a Commonwealth country then known as Malaya. The journey that began there is still unended; the business that began there is still unfinished. The realisation that began that year, which turned into a belief that I still maintain, can be very simply put. I make no apologies for it. I know that it is taken as old-fashioned by some and patronising by others, but I repeat, I make no apologies for it. It is this: we all have responsibilities, duties even, towards each other. And if ‘we’ have more than others, then our duties and responsibilities are all the greater, whether ‘we’ are individuals or communities or countries. And if ‘we’ have more than others in any measure because we have taken or profited from those others, then our duties and responsibilities are all the greater still. Without ever letting such a philosophy be taken to patronising or even worse, neo-imperialist, extremes, it is one which I see as necessary for at least some Commonwealth member countries, and, I am afraid to say, one that I see as lacking today.
While I came to work in the Foundation some six and a half years ago, as many of you know, I had been associated with its work and indeed that of the Commonwealth generally, since the late 1980s. That association has taken various forms over the years. First, I was a grant applicant, for funds that would lead to the formation of the Commonwealth Association for Local Action and Economic Development (COMMACT), a Commonwealth association of which I was proud to be founding Chairman until 1996. Second, I was an adviser to the Foundation, being invited to be a member of the committee that advised the Foundation when it convened the very first Commonwealth NGO Forum in 1991. That in turn led, thirdly, to being the rapporteur of that and the 1995 NGO Forums, which in turn led to the work the Foundation asked me and my good friend Leith Dunn to research and consult about in order prepare the Foundation’s Guidelines for Good NGO Policy and Practice, which were published in 1995. In turn, that led, fourthly, to being asked to be a member of the Foundation’s NGO Advisory Committee and to being, fifthly, involved, mostly in the role of rapporteur (a role which I would advise you all to avoid at all costs), in various Foundation and wider Commonwealth events over the years up to 1998, at which point I became the Foundation’s Deputy Director, and then finally, as you know, to becoming its Director in January 2000.
So I suppose you could say that I have seen the Foundation, and indeed both the main Commonwealth institutions, and activities such as CHOGM, from many perspectives over some 15 years. There has been a lot of change over those years, mostly for the better. My first experience of a CHOGM illustrates one such change for the better. This was in Auckland in 1995. Asked by the Foundation to go over (Susan and I were living in Brisbane at this time, so it wasn’t far to go) and present the NGO Guidelines, the then Deputy Director, Don Clarke, expressed some exasperation when he greeted me. He told me that there was a problem about getting me into the meeting to do what the Foundation had asked. So I found myself bouncing off security cordons, and wondering whether a good friend of ours, then a civil society activist and now an MP in New Zealand, was perhaps having a greater impact on the CHOGM by protesting against it and, indeed doing so by chaining herself to railings, than I was. When the Heads went on their retreat, Susan and I fled to ours, at the first opportunity, scratching our heads at the whole experience. The CHOGM was a fortress !
Well, things have changed a lot since then, with the opening up of CHOGMs, and indeed many official events and processes, including Ministerial meetings, to civil society. That is a change for the better, but it is an item of ‘unfinished business’ that I would like to touch upon this evening.
While I have said this before, I’ll say it again: when they decided to establish the Foundation in 1965, Commonwealth Heads of Government were very far-sighted in setting up their relations with civil society not within the Secretariat, but alongside it, in a separate body. Such separateness can of course be well-used or badly-used, the latter manifest in the Foundation and Secretariat ploughing their own separate furrows, as they tended to do until the quite recent past. But as each recent year has passed, not just during my time in Marlborough House, I have seen the debilitating aspects of the separateness disappear, and at the same time the positive aspects of there being two separate bodies – Secretariat and Foundation - more and more productively used. I should explain what I mean by the latter. As many of you are aware, one of the ‘buzzwords’ of the recent past, in so far as the Secretariat and Foundation are concerned, has been this one: ‘alignment’, one key aspect of which means the two bodies working closely together. Fine, good. But if we take that ‘alignment’ to the extreme, it means that we may lose sight of the fact that the Foundation's main constituency, or stakeholder, call it what you like, is civil society. If it is perceived by that constituency as being so close to the Secretariat that it is just a part or appendage of it, then we will lose the core of our essence – being the “safe space”, as Rudo Chitiga so accurately described it, where governments and civil society meet, learn form each other, and work together in ways underpinned by mutual respect and understanding. This is part of the unfinished business – the safe space is there, but the need for and value of it – to both parties – needs to be fully understood by both parties if the Foundation is to make it useful to them. Otherwise, I can assure you from some, shall we say, interesting, experiences that the ‘safe space’ is, for Foundation staff at least, a distinctly unsafe space to work in, under attack from both sides.
A related aspect of this unfinished business concerns who, just looking at the civil society side, should be in the safe space ? As you are all aware, one development of the recent past, of which all of us in the Foundation are proud, is that there are now civil society representatives as full and equal members of our Board of Governors and Executive Committees. This development adds to the uniqueness of the Foundation among intergovernmental organisations. But, no sooner do we give ourselves a pat on the back (I’m not aware of many from other quarters) than I hear people saying “ah yes, but the representatives are from among a group of people handpicked by the Foundation, its Civil Society Advisory Committee….” And I hear similar barbs concerning other aspects of filling the ‘safe space’: for example the civil society consultations before, and representation at Ministerial meetings that we have been much involved with in recent years. The cries here are “ well, they didn’t consult me, they didn’t invite my organisation….” …….and so on.
Let’s be clear. We have three main options when it comes to admission to, or occupation of, the ‘safe space’. One: laissez-faire. Let in whoever wants to get in, which in effect means whoever is able to get in. This, as many have pointed out, results in the richer and more powerful individuals and organisations getting in. Do we really want that? Does that necessarily get the desired result? I think not. Two: democracy. Let the constituency or its sub-constituencies elect their representatives. While I know that it’s not exactly politically correct for a loyal Commonwealth servant to in any way question democracy, and that I don’t want to rule myself out from invitations in the future to be a member of a Commonwealth Election Observer Group, I don’t think this approach produces the desired result, either. Coming back to the question of the manner in which civil society is represented on the Foundation’s governing bodies, the decision made by Board this year was that while the representatives would be from the Civil Society Advisory Committee, the aim is to have them, in future, elected by regional caucuses. I believe – and I stress this is a personal view, not by any means necessarily shared by colleagues or governors – that such an approach would be unwise. Within the civil society sector, as within other sectors, some of those involved are not pursuing the ‘common good’ but using its apparent pursuit as a vehicle for the pursuit of self-interest, power, ego. We see the same in politics and in business, let me stress. It is my firm belief that a democratic approach to determining who ‘represents’ civil society in any aspect of the safe space would result in such people filling it.
Am I allowed to go on or are such views so heretical that I should be ejected at this point ?
The third option is therefore nothing more or less than being based on selection. This places a great onus of responsibility on the Foundation. It’s easy to fall into the trap of filling the safe space with safe voices. That would be entirely mistaken. It’s equally easy to fall into the trap of choosing cronies, or the most available, or (in the case of an organisation with limited resources), the cheapest. I won’t go on much further, except to say that I think Foundation staff exercise their responsibility over selection very well. They go to great lengths to keep in touch with who is doing what, so that they know who’s best and most experienced or able in any particular field. This is unfinished business. All that I am saying is that regardless of criticism the Foundation should stick to it, and if it bruises a few precious egos or makes the odd mistake in the process, then so be it.
Time to move on. Another item of unfinished business I want to touch upon concerns partnership and cooperation in the Commonwealth. Let me come straight to the points. One: there isn’t enough of it. Two: it should be not just an aspect of the way the Commonwealth works, but a fundamental and essential characteristic of it. It should not be the preferred way of working, but the pre-determined approach. Ah, I can see some of you thinking: “has he gone completely off his head now ? No sooner has he poo-pooed democracy than he is failing to recognise that cooperation is already the way the Commonwealth works ! Look at the Para 55 initiative, look at all the official-unofficial cooperation that has come about since the Coolum High Level Review Report, look at the way the Coolum Committee now involves the various ‘unofficial’ organisations, look at the new Council of Commonwealth Societies and the way Stuart Mole is pushing its mandate far beyond the old focus on Commonwealth day, look at what he said earlier about Secretariat-Foundation cooperation ! And look at ComHabitat, and the new Council through which the education groups cooperate, and the Commonwealth Organisations Group ! And what about the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation ? The man has gone completely mad ! We should have thrown him out when he invited us to!”
OK, yes, I will respond, all the above is good. Fine. But we need to do more of it and get better at it. Let me make two observations. In the document “A New Vision for the Commonwealth”, so disregarded at the time of the High Level Review, it was pointed out that the resources, energies and abilities possessed by the ‘unofficial’ Commonwealth are huge. Surely, then, when confronted by a need or issue in or across the Commonwealth, our starting point should be “how do we mobilise and involve all those resources, energies and abilities in addressing the need or issue at hand ?” But we don’t do that. Here’s an example. Not so very long ago, mid-way across Pall Mall, a passing Secretariat colleague said “ we’ve just come back from the mission to (country X) and have lots of ideas we want to talk to you about…..” (yes, this was a long break in Pall Mall traffic!). By the time I’d reached the sandwich bar I was heading for (or was it the Marlborough House gate, I forget who was going which way), I thought: “Why had I not heard of this important mission ? I’ll bet few other organisations did either (this was subsequently proved correct). Surely the mission itself should have involved, from the stage of planning it, people and organisations of all sectors, and not just a few Secretariat staff. Yes, what I mean is that multi-sectoral partnership-based approaches should be the way the Commonwealth does its business, a distinguishing characteristic of the way it (as compared to other inter-governmental and international groupings) work. This is not a criticism of the way the Secretariat works. We are all at fault. I think too many of the ‘unofficial’ organisations display the same characteristic. My second observation illustrates this. Just a few months ago I arrived in a country to a participate in a meeting organised by a Commonwealth organisation. I was much impressed by the fact that a “Welcome to the Commonwealth meeting on blah-blah-blah” desk had been set up at the airport. But then I saw it wasn’t for the meeting I was going to, but one organised by a different Commonwealth organisation. And I discovered subsequently that here were two Commonwealth organisations, both based in London, organising meetings in the same country at the same time, without either realising it ! Really, if two organisations can’t organise a joint welcome desk at an airport, what hope do we have of attaining the synergy and more-than-the-sum-total-of–the-parts effect that partnership and cooperation can produce on the major needs and problems of our time !
To take my point to a more general level, let me repeat and indeed extend a proposal I and others were pilloried for making a couple of year’s back. There should be established a core group through which the main official and unofficial Commonwealth organisations actively seek and agree ways of collaborative working, including strategic and annual planning, and, as and when needed, being the starting point for the kind of mission I referred to just now in my “Country X” example. Neither the extended Coolum Committee nor the Council of Commonwealth Societies fits the bill. It needs something more focussed, bolder, action-orientated. If this looks like a renewed proposal for an elitist, inner-circle, “Apex” group, then I make no apologies for it.
Just two more things to go, everyone. I realise that the glass of wine to follow is on the minds of more than a few of you by now. But these last two are the bits of unfinished business that are my greatest concern as I leave office this week.
Money. Yes, so I said earlier that there are already huge human and financial resources existing, as “A New Vision” pointed out. We have to be better at mobilising them. But doing so is not a substitute for better resourcing of all Commonwealth agencies that are able to show effectiveness at doing their job. In particular here I am referring to the Foundation and also the Secretariat. As many of you know from remarks I made here soon after the Coolum CHOGM, while I welcomed and still welcome certain aspects of the High Level Review Report adopted there, overall it induced sighs rather than highs in me. Through it, the countries which provide the bulk of the resources for the official Commonwealth agencies seemed to me – and I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this - to be saying: “the Commonwealth is an inexpensive, marginal grouping. What is needed is for it to become even more inexpensive and thus even more marginal, so that we can concentrate on international concerns which better attune to our national interests….” I have called this a “reductionist” approach to the Commonwealth, one not shared by other less wealthy and powerful member countries.
I have, ladies and gentlemen, derived a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction from working in the Commonwealth Foundation, for governments and for civil society over the past several years. And I will continue to serve both in whatever way I can in the future. As I mentioned earlier, my Commonwealth journey does not end this week. But if there is one thing that has dismayed me over that time, it is this apparent “reductionist” view. It slowly, drip by drip, diminishes the value of the Commonwealth and indeed threatens is continued existence. It flies in the face of the personal view that I expressed at the beginning of my remarks, and let me repeat them:
“……if ‘we’ have more than others, then our duties and responsibilities are all the greater, whether ‘we’ are individuals or communities or countries. And if ‘we’ have more than others in any measure because we have taken or profited from those others, then our duties and responsibilities are all the greater still……..”
Let me summarise what I am saying here succinctly: unless there is some major step forward taken in terms of adequately resourcing the official Commonwealth agencies, and I am bound to say, most particularly the Foundation, then I very much regret to say that the Commonwealth will die.
My final remarks relate to the financial matter. What does the Commonwealth do ? These days the short answer is that it does things in the closely related fields of democracy and development. It’s undoubtedly a force for good in both respects, though with such limited resources it can’t do much, particularly in the field of development, where resource requirements associated with meeting Millennium Development Goals are massive. So I ask myself, where can it be a major player ? Or rather, in what aspect of current human need and endeavour is there a need for intervention, for the kind of partnership intervention of which I have spoken ?
Surely, the answer lies in another word beginning with “d”: diversity. The world today is beset by the fragmentation and conflict that stem from inequality of power and possession. It is beset by related divisions between races, countries, cultures, and religions. It has become preoccupied with dealing with the results through the hardware of military, security and political action and has sidelined the software – even what the world is doing to fight the war against poverty is, for example, tiny compared to what it is spending on other wars including what is generally termed the war on terrorism. The need for another war – a war on the intolerance and ignorance that lead to the hatreds and extremism that lie alongside poverty at the root of much current fragmentation and conflict - is hardly recognised. It is an educational war in the main and it needs fighting in both the North and the South. It needs fighting with and among young people in particular. It is time to wage it, and to wage it effectively needs as much if not more resources than the world is spending on dealing with the results and symptoms rather than the causes.
The Commonwealth has always had a ‘mandate’ to take up this fight – it lies in the Singapore Declaration of Commonwealth Principles of 1971. I will not read the relevant parts of the Declaration now, but they are in the printed text of these remarks:
“Members of the Commonwealth come from territories in the six continents and five oceans……… They encompass a rich variety of cultures, traditions and institutions……”
“We recognise racial prejudice as a dangerous sickness threatening the healthy development of the human race and racial discrimination as an unmitigated evil of society.”
“We believe that the wide disparities in wealth now existing between different sections of mankind are too great to be tolerated.”
“We believe that international co-operation is essential to remove the causes of war, promote tolerance, combat injustice, and secure development among the peoples of the world. We are convinced that the Commonwealth is one of the most fruitful associations for these purposes.”
“……..We believe that our multi-national association can expand human understanding and understanding among nations, assist in the elimination of discrimination based on differences of race, colour or creed, maintain and strengthen personal liberty, contribute to the enrichment of life for all, and provide a powerful influence for peace among nations.”
Your Excellencies, ladies and gentleman, the war we should be waging is the one that will make our world a place where we all profit from diversity rather than suffer from it, as we do now. The Commonwealth at present tends to fit its work in the fields of democracy and development into the gaps left by others. Diversity is not a gap. It is a vast and unexplored cavern. It is not unfinished business but rather unstarted business.