The Commonwealth Day
By Don McKinnon, Secretary-General Commonwealth

TODAY – 12 March 2007 – as always, on the second Monday in March - is Commonwealth Day. This is the day on which nearly 2 billion people worldwide could reasonably stop and ask themselves what Commonwealth membership means to them.

How many of our citizens know or care that this family of nations is home to a third of the world's population?

How many here in South Asia are aware that some 80 per cent of the population of the Commonwealth lives in the five Commonwealth countries of South Asia, with the remainder spread across 48 other countries in all continents and oceans?

And, more important than geography and statistics, what would that knowledge mean to them? How does it sit alongside their countries' membership of the great 'acronym soup' of the UN, SAARC or SAFTA?

Each of these organisations has its vision - whether the focus is narrow or broad. The Commonwealth is a family of nations, freely and equally associated.

It is a powerful force for peace and democratic stability; it fights poverty and injustice; it promotes human and economic development.

Its distinctiveness is the power of working with others, and of achieving things by consensus. Its strength is that of the combined voice, and especially the voices of smaller and more vulnerable states not otherwise heard.

From India with over a billion people and Nigeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh with some 140 million each, to the 26 of our 53 member countries with populations of less than a million, we represent every challenge known to humankind.

For both governments and peoples, look no further for what that means in practice than today's Commonwealth Day theme of 'Respecting Difference, Promoting Understanding'.

The Commonwealth is home to rich and poor, and people of every colour and creed.

It is also an organisation that has striven hard to make democracy a way of life. And yet we know full well that within it there are tensions, misunderstandings and fractures in almost all of our societies.

There are communities divided by conflict; there are young people feeling adrift and apart; there are people of different faith, ethnicity and political persuasion who don't sit easily side by side.

Some of these divisions arise from grievance and humiliation; others, for the simplest of reasons like a lack of knowledge and understanding, or a fear of the unknown.

Our Commonwealth challenge is to find out not just why, but how to build communities, everywhere. Nigeria, for instance, is home not just to the three major tribes of Hausa, Fulani and Yoruba, but also to some 250 ethnic groups and two main faiths, Christianity and Islam. Or take a place like Guyana, with its people of African and Indian descent.

Meanwhile multicultural Canada and Britain are home to Muslim and Hindu populations, among which many people were born outside their shores.

Respect and understanding need to be at the core of these and all our diverse Commonwealth societies. We are at work on this very issue, right now.

Commonwealth Heads of Government have asked me to report to them in Kampala in November -analysing where we do and do not succeed in building communities, and starting to point to the practical ways of how to succeed.

A new Commonwealth Commission is addressing the issue from various angles.

From universal values to local customs. From the practices of a real democratic culture, to new approaches to quality and openness in education and in the media. From the need for nations to work together multilaterally, to the need for individuals - above all, those in school - to learn, live and breathe the principles of respect and understanding.

Beyond this special Commonwealth Day and its theme, the Commonwealth's continuing challenges are two-fold: strengthening democracy and promoting development.

Democracy - and with it liberty, equality and justice - is our Commonwealth foundation stone.

Last December a democratically elected government in Fiji was overthrown by the army, and Fiji was immediately suspended from the councils of the Commonwealth.

Our priority now is not to isolate Fiji, but to engage and see it come in from the cold. In the same way; we hope to observe important elections in Nigeria and other member countries.

Beyond supporting elections, our advisers will be at work strengthening the very institutions of democracy: media outlets and civil society organisations as much as parliaments, judiciaries, treasuries and civil services.

Development - economic and human - is the Commonwealth edifice under constant construction.

We lobby tirelessly on the international stage, while our advisers bring about change and reform on the ground.

2007 is the make-or-break year for concluding a deal in the World Trade Organisation that allows our developing country members to enter new markets and to open up their own.

And this, in a world less skewed by tariffs and subsidies, and with 'aid for trade' for those who most need it. 2007 is also the year when African, Caribbean and Pacific countries must conclude their Economic Partnership Agreements with the EU.

It is the year when we continue to help member governments look hard and fast at the dark specters of ignorance and disease which hang over the Commonwealth, with 80 million of our children out of primary or secondary school, and two-thirds of the world's cases of HIV/AIDS living with us.

These are the great enterprises which we reflect on this Commonwealth Day – here in South Asia, and across the Commonwealth. And this is what Commonwealth membership means: trusted partnership and trusted friends.●

[This article has been received by ‘Pakistan Times’ [Daily E-newspaper] from Geraldine Goh Communications Adviser Communications & Public Affairs Division via Email]

© 2006 By Don McKinnon