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Cumberland Lodge Conference 2006 Report

The Commonwealth after Valletta

Cumberland Lodge, 14-15 January 2006

Session I: Malta and Beyond: the official Commonwealth

Chair:
Prue Scarlett
Chair, LEPRA

Speakers:
Matthew Neuhaus
Director, Political Affairs Division, Commonwealth Secretariat
Peter Lyon
Emeritus Reader, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London Publisher, Africa Today James Robbins
Diplomatic Correspondent, BBC News

Matthew Neuhaus began by making four assertions. First, he believed that the Commonwealth had emerged from the Malta Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) as a stronger, more united organisation, after its relatively recent divisions over Pakistan and Zimbabwe. There had been general relief that no such divisions had emerged at Valletta. Secondly, having reaffirmed its fundamental values, the Commonwealth had shown itself willing to take on new challenges, notably in relation to tolerance and extremism. Some observers had asserted that these were issues that the Commonwealth should leave well alone. But while it was true that the Commonwealth necessarily had to move with some caution, it was clear that the Commonwealth needed to address such issues if it were to remain relevant in the early twenty-first century. Thirdly, the Commonwealth was an organisation which had something substantial to say on trade and development. Alongside its promotion of political values, the recent CHOGM had shown that the Commonwealth was willing to carve out a role in the debate around the WTO agenda. Fourthly, the Commonwealth had shown itself an organisation committed to continuous improvement, and bold enough to make changes - such as those necessary to make good its commitment to embracing civil society.

There had been some significant changes in the organisation of the CHOGM in 2005, as compared with previous CHOGMs. The most noticeable change was of course that in Valletta there had been a foreign ministers' meeting as well as the heads of governments' meeting. But this followed on from other fundamental changes, most importantly that there was no longer (officially at least) a meeting of the Committee of the Whole (i.e., of senior officials) at the CHOGM venue itself, parallel with the heads of governments' meeting. Rather, the Committee of the Whole had met in London and thrashed out the key issues ahead of the actual CHOGM. This had been a useful innovation, and had in general led to a smoother process. The Communiqué issued by the Valletta CHOGM was unfortunately the longest ever, with 103 paragraphs, but it did address in a considered way a large number of substantive issues. There had been some rather premature hopes that the document would be approved at the first executive session; those hopes had been dashed in particular by the resistance of some of the smaller countries, and it was clearly a lesson to be learned for the future that it was better not to rush through the Communiqué. Indeed, because it took into account later discussion, the Communiqué was able to cover such matters as CMAG membership. In addition, the heads of government had issued a separate document on trade (on which the officials had been unable previously to agree).

The foreign ministers' meeting in Valletta had been an interesting innovation. It was clear that the foreign ministers hadn't wanted to engage too much in shaping the Communiqué, but had chosen instead to stake out a role for themselves in engaging with other partners. The Commonwealth Business Forum no longer reported directly to the heads of government, but instead had had a more substantial debate with the foreign ministers, a debate which clearly had an impact on the heads of governments' discussion of trade and development. In addition, there had been a substantial exchange between civil society representatives and foreign ministers - not so much at the scheduled time, when there had not been enough time for proper discussion, as at a second meeting while the heads of government were on retreat. In general, the Maltese had been keen to ensure that the outcomes of the civil society, business and youth meetings were fed through to official levels. There had been some talk after Abuja of disengaging the CHOGM from the civil society, business and youth meetings, but the Valletta CHOGM had shown the value of retaining these close links of time and place.

The new, more streamlined organisation of the CHOGM ensured that the heads of government were able to have a very substantial discussion during their retreat, on such matters as trade and tolerance. Indeed, the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, who was not usually given to hyperbole, had declared the Valletta CHOGM the best he had been to, because of the quality and depth of the discussions during the retreat. The retreat was of course one of the most distinctive aspects of the CHOGM - in contrast, for instance to UN summits, whose proceedings consisted mainly of set-piece statements and bilateral meetings.

Perhaps the most significant new departure in Malta was the decision to tackle the issues surrounding faith, tolerance and extremism. The Communiqué had included a useful set of statements on this area, though much of the practicalities of how to operationalise them had been left to the Secretary-General to work out. Indeed, it was probably true to say that the Commonwealth had yet to find even the right language to begin tackling these issues. There had already been some initial thinking about them within the Secretariat. Clearly there was a need to engage in consultations with parliamentarians, civil society organisations, etc., in the different regions of the Commonwealth; and particularly with youth organisations, since it was primarily amongst young people that the feeling of not being listened to and of not being connected led to extremism. It was hoped that all these discussions would eventually feed through to a pinnacle group of highly-respected Commonwealth citizens, who could put forward views and ideas to the next CHOGM in Kampala.

There were other challenges ahead of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth's democratic principles and the good offices role of the Secretary-General had been firmly re-asserted but were clearly in some cases sensitive - not least in relation to Uganda, the host of the next CHOGM. There were grounds for cautious optimism on Uganda, though; the Commonwealth was closely engaged and would be making a major effort in the run-up to the next CHOGM. The Commonwealth also clearly had much to do to build up its role in relation to the economic agenda. Zimbabwe was still an issue, albeit one now in the background. Yet another challenge would be to find a successor to the current Secretary-General, who had won plaudits for his handling of numerous sensitive issues. And perhaps the biggest challenge of all, looking to the long term, would be to ensure that the Commonwealth continued to assert itself and indeed to re-invent itself in order to help shape the international agenda of the future.

Peter Lyon referred to his discussion of the Malta CHOGM in his guest editorial in the January 2006 issue of The Round Table. He agreed with Matthew Neuhaus that the Commonwealth needed to keep re-inventing itself in order to remain relevant in the modern world. Nevertheless he was aware that there were difficulties and sometimes limitations in this process. It was often said that the Commonwealth was both unique and exemplary; but clearly it could not be both. Indeed, the Commonwealth was open to a variety of characterisations - as had been clear from the sometimes bewildering coverage in the Maltese press.

The terms 'official' and 'unofficial' as applied to the Commonwealth were not exclusive, and indeed were often described as overlapping and complementary. There was no necessary or inherent antagonism between the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the Commonwealth People's Forum. But there was undoubtedly more of a tension than had sometimes been portrayed. The presence of a host of civil society organisations was clearly viewed by some heads of government as something of a threat. Moreover, the relationship between the people's Commonwealth and the intergovernmental Commonwealth clearly needed more thought, if the intergovernmental Commonwealth's repeated assertions of the value of engagement were to prove more than lip-service.

Another issue which had been left rather unresolved was the future of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG). Heads had reasserted the value of the group and had decided on its new membership. Clearly the attempt to discipline members and to create a sense of scrutiny in light of the principles of the organisation enunciated at Harare was a laudable aim. But equally clearly, CMAG was an institution that had not fulfilled early hopes and expectations. It would be wrong to suggest that CMAG had been a failure, but neither had it been an unqualified success. More thought was needed about how to manage the transition to a rules-based organisation.

The current Secretary-General had found himself in the midst of a number of controversies. Interestingly, he had become most entangled in Malta with representatives of the national press of his own country, New Zealand, over his suggestion that there was no necessary link between democracy and economic progress. Of course, both goals were desirable, but Peter Lyon thought that there was nothing exceptionable in the Secretary-General's hint that the pursuit of one did not necessarily complement the pursuit of the other. The controversy was clearly something of a sideshow, but it illustrated the Secretary-General's capacity for robustness. One of the most important challenges in front of the Commonwealth would be to find a suitable successor to him. A number of people seemed to assume that the post would go to someone from southern Asia, on the principle of geographical rotation. But that principle had never been set in stone, and the Commonwealth would be well advised to look for the best candidate regardless of his or her geographical background. The official Commonwealth in practice pivoted mostly on the office of the Commonwealth Secretary-General, and most probably would continue to do so in the immediate future.

There were other difficult problems ahead of the Commonwealth - not least, those to do with membership (and here Peter Lyon thought it would be a grave mistake to allow the membership to increase much further), and to do with putting into practice the heads of governments' somewhat grandiloquent pronouncements on issues of faith and tolerance, and of development and trade. There was certainly scope for the Commonwealth to retain its relevance in the early twenty-first century; but the key test would always remain not what the heads of government said, but what the organisation actually did.

James Robbins said that journalists were often accused of being unduly negative and pessimistic. This was undoubtedly unfair, and misunderstood the nature of journalism. Indeed, most journalists were acutely aware of the need to be careful not to paint an unremittingly awful picture. In this spirit, while he did think that the Commonwealth needed to do more both to build on its strengths and to improve its image, his own message was a largely positive one - that the Commonwealth was relevant in the modern world, that it had potential to be even more so, and that the Malta CHOGM looked and felt like a well-organised, inclusive and successful meeting, setting the Commonwealth on many of the right paths.

The problems which characterised the early twenty-first century - most notably, the challenges of development, democracy and tolerance - were ones which put Commonwealth concerns and expertise right at the centre of the world agenda. Moreover, in a situation where other international organisations, such as the UN and the EU, were beginning to look pretty weak, there was a great opportunity for the Commonwealth to raise its game. There had been a few storms in Malta - notably over the EU sugar regime, with many of the small producers blaming the UK for not doing enough on their behalf; and the gulf of understanding over the situation in Uganda - but as compared with the big picture, these were fairly minor matters.

The really big story from the Malta CHOGM was the heads of governments' statement on trade. A lot of the credit for this should go to the drafters of the statement, who had made the story an easy one for reporters to write. The statement was pithy, direct, and unequivocal. In particular, the injunction to the richer states to 'demonstrate the political courage and will to give more than they receive in this [WTO] round', was almost a stroke of genius. With its appeal to fairness, generosity, and political courage - rather than pandering to the lowest common denominator - the statement had allowed the Commonwealth to seize the moral high ground, and the Commonwealth had undoubtedly gained credibility as a result. Further, the genuine engagement in the Hong Kong meetings by the Secretary-General had been admirable, and had been acknowledged by many, including Pascal Lamy. What the Commonwealth in particular now offered, and what it needed to build on, was its ability to give small states a place at the table; and to back this up with technical and legal assistance and capacity-building.

The demands for good governance and democracy highlighted in the Harare and Millbrook declarations had wrought an irreversible change in the Commonwealth. The promotion of good governance was now central to the Commonwealth's global role - and it was a role which was needed now as much as ever. The endgame of apartheid in South Africa had shown how important it was to keep up international pressure on oppressive states. Indeed, the lesson there had been that a beleaguered and oppressed people could get disproportionate succour from outside pressure: the knowledge that other people were fighting for them was even more important than the actual effects of any sanctions. Sadly, a little of that had been lost in the effort to push Zimbabwe to the margins of debate. The Commonwealth might not have succeeded had it tried to do more, but that was not the point. Some people seemed to be glad that Zimbabwe was no longer a member and therefore no longer dominated Commonwealth debates, but that was a very short-sighted view. Indeed, the Commonwealth-led pressure on South Africa had only built up after South Africa had left the Commonwealth. It was disappointing to ordinary Zimbabwean citizens that the voice of the Commonwealth appeared to have been stilled.

A particular cause for optimism about the Commonwealth was India's rapid emergence as a superpower - with not only staggering economic achievements but (unlike its great economic rival, China) a deep commitment to democracy and democratic values. India would clearly be looking for stages on which to play a more significant international role, and had been frustrated by the failure of UN reform, especially in relation to the Security Council. It was clear that India was now ready for a much greater leadership role in the Commonwealth. There had been some evidence of this in India's role in the Committee of the Whole and in the preparation of the CHOGM Communiqué. Some countries were of course suspicious of India's potential role. But in James Robbins's view they should set aside their fears. An enhanced role for India would bring new vitality to the Commonwealth.

It was often said that the Commonwealth was both an intergovernmental and a people's organisation. At the elite level it was characterised by biennial CHOGMs, and at the popular it was best known for the Commonwealth Games. There was perhaps not enough in between, although civil society organisations helped to fill some of the gap. The Commonwealth needed to engage with its citizens more, and to champion real stories and real lives. For example, the Commonwealth Secretariat's website, though not the worst, was far from being the best. Anyone visiting it would need a fairly good prior knowledge of the Commonwealth in order to get much from it. It needed a human face - real stories of young people benefiting from Commonwealth initiatives. The Commonwealth's main problem here was not a lack of substance, but a lack of skill in the way it projected its image and its profile. The Commonwealth had a good story to tell, but it needed to do more to get the story across.

• Asked who were the outstanding leaders at the CHOGM, Matthew Neuhaus said that a large number of leaders had made important and distinctive contributions. A by no means exhaustive list (in no particular order) would include, amongst others, Prime Minister P.J. Patterson from Jamaica, who had provided outstanding leadership on a range of issues; President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana, who had had a great deal of influence in the discussion of the sugar issue and the trade statement; Prime Minister Owen Arthur of Barbados, an old hand who remained a key player; President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, who had been a dominating influence, and would be a very hard act to follow as Chair of the Commonwealth; President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, who had been much criticised and was going through a difficult time domestically, but who had played a very important role on trade issues; President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, who had made a quieter impact but had still been important; Kamal Nath, the Trade Minister of India, who had made a very active contribution, not only on trade; Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz of Pakistan, clearly a figure to watch; Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi of Malaysia, another leader to watch; Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore, who had made a quiet but important contribution, particularly on how the Commonwealth could contribute to the international economic debate; Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare from Papua New Guinea, another old hand whose contributions were much valued; prime ministers John Howard and Helen Clark of Australia and New Zealand, who had played confident and influential roles; and of course Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi of Malta, who had chaired the meetings with great skill. Prime Minister Tony Blair of the UK, though perhaps a little put off his stride early in the meeting by the Caribbean countries' reaction on the EU sugar issue, had re-established his relationships and had indeed shown a mature and engaged attitude. Matthew Neuhaus said that he was often asked where the modern equivalents of the great Commonwealth leaders of the past were; but many of the latter had been in power for twenty years or more. It was perhaps part of the price paid for greater democracy that leaders had less time to make their marks.
• Peter Lyon agreed with Matthew Neuhaus's latter point, though he thought that many of the 'great' leaders of the past perhaps seemed greater in retrospect than they did at the time. He also added that the CHOGM had been a very successful one for the Secretary-General, who had made his own skills and expertise clear - a point which underlined how Secretary-General-centric the Commonwealth was, and how important it was to find an able successor to Don McKinnon.
• Asked to comment further on the lack of direction given to the Secretary-General on the questions of faith and tolerance, Matthew Neuhaus said that while there had been much discussion of the issues at the retreat, the heads of government had not found it possible to go much beyond the form of words agreed by the Committee of the Whole - that is, a commitment to support 'initiatives to promote mutual understanding and respect among all faiths and communities in the Commonwealth'. There were some observers who felt that the Commonwealth, as a secular and practical organisation, should give such issues a wide berth. This was not the view of the heads of government, many of whom were keen for the Commonwealth to engage with such issues, as an extension of their shared values. Nevertheless there were clearly difficulties in translating intentions into a practical programme, which had largely been left to the Secretary-General. The problem was therefore not so much the issue itself, but how to move forward with it. Clearly this was an area where the intergovernmental Commonwealth would need to engage fully with civil society.
• James Robbins said that he was heartened that so few people spoke up against the idea of the Commonwealth tackling the issue. Indeed, in his view it was essential for the Commonwealth to tackle issues surrounding security and tolerance if it were to remain relevant. Moreover, in a world which was steadily becoming at the same time more globalised and more atomised, the Commonwealth was uniquely placed, because of its shared values, to work around divisions. The CHOGM Communiqué had included an unequivocal condemnation of terrorism, and was better than anything that the UN had so far come up with.
• Matthew Neuhaus was also questioned about the suggestion at Abuja that the CHOGM should be decoupled from the civil society, business and youth meetings. What had changed the views of officials and heads of government? In response Matthew Neuhaus emphasised that the suggestion at Abuja had been neither widespread nor forceful, and had mainly reflected the view that such a plethora of meetings would make it difficult for a small country to host Commonwealth meetings. But the Malta meetings had shown how such a range of meetings could be handled successfully.
• One participant noted that HIV/AIDS presented the most lethal and catastrophic threat to many Commonwealth countries. Why had it not been tackled with more urgency at the CHOGM? Matthew Neuhaus replied by saying that in fact the issue had been discussed, and the Commonwealth leaders had referred to the threat in paragraph 77 of their Communiqué. They certainly didn't underestimate the scale of the problem. But there were a lot of organisations working in this area, including the UN, and there was little point in the Commonwealth, with such limited resources at its disposal, duplicating their efforts.
• James Robbins repeated his point that the Commonwealth had the opportunity to raise its game, but that one of the major tasks ahead of it was to make itself and its work better known.

Session II: Malta and beyond: the unofficial Commonwealth

Chair:
Stephen Cox
Executive Secretary, The Royal Society

Speakers:
Rudo Chitiga
Deputy Director, Commonwealth Foundation
Daisy Cooper
Acting Head, Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit
Stuart Mole
Director-General, Royal Commonwealth Society

Rudo Chitiga said that after the Commonwealth People's Forum in Abuja in 2003, she and her colleagues in the Commonwealth Foundation had brought back two firm lessons: first, that the Commonwealth Foundation should never try to organise a Commonwealth People's Forum without the participation at every stage of civil society organisations; and secondly that a successful Commonwealth People's Forum must start with a lot of work at home. She and her colleagues had tried to follow these two rules in facilitating the Malta Commonwealth People's Forum.

The Malta Commonwealth People's Forum had effectively started in March 2005, with a series of regional civil society consultations in fourteen countries, which aimed to discover what civil society organisations hoped to get out of the CHOGM and what the Commonwealth Foundation could do to support them. These consultations discussed a number of key issues, including those surrounding small states, Africa, the Millennium Development Goals, and information technology. They were followed by an e-consultation, with more than fifty active participants and many more observers. Hence the process began with a dialogue within the Commonwealth family on what issues and what agenda should be taken forward to the People's Forum. The implementation of the agenda was then mainly in the hands of the Foundation's civil society advisory committee. The holding of these extensive actual and electronic consultations helped enormously in enabling civil society to discuss many of the same issues that were being addressed by the intergovernmental Commonwealth, at the time of the Committee of the Whole. They had also been accompanied by a significant dialogue with foreign ministries, which were grappling with many of the same problems and in many cases welcomed civil society input. As a result, unlike the case two years before (when civil society largely missed the boat), civil society views were percolated through to the intergovernmental Commonwealth at a stage when they could still have an effect, and this was reflected in the large number of paragraphs in the CHOGM Communiqué which were clearly influenced by civil society submissions.

In Malta itself, the Commonwealth People's Forum consisted of some forty separate meetings (three of them organised by the Commonwealth Foundation itself, the rest organised by civil society organisations or partnerships between them), which were organised within a smaller number of broad thematic areas. Given that by then the CHOGM Communiqué was almost complete, the question of course arose of where and how to feed the outcomes of these civil society meetings into the intergovernmental process. The solution adopted was a Communiqué from the Commonwealth People's Forum itself, along with a series of statements from each of the meetings. In addition, civil society organisations were now given an audience with the foreign ministers. The initial meeting with the latter, scheduled for the Wednesday preceding CHOGM, turned out to be too brief to be of real value, but as a result of further pressure from the Foundation and civil society organisations, supported by the Secretariat, the dialogue was continued more fruitfully on the Saturday. Furthermore, there was the significant innovation of an address and question-and-answer session with President Museveni of Uganda, which (despite widespread reservations about the situation in Uganda) was a positive experience on both sides and a hopeful sign and precedent looking towards 2007. Finally, the engagement between civil society and the 'official' Commonwealth had been helped by a number of flukes, such as that accreditation badges had been printed in the same colour for everyone, or that the absence of an NGO lounge had meant that civil society representatives were able to enjoy access to the official delegates' lounge.

The whole process leading up to the Malta meetings had shown the need for a great deal of work at an early stage, in order to influence the intergovernmental process while it still could be influenced. It had also shown that the CHOGM process decreasingly revolved around London, but rather started with an engagement between civil society and governments in each country. The positive outcomes of the dialogue between foreign ministers and civil society was due to the groundwork done in countries. Foreign ministers and officials often asked how many people from their own country would be attending the Commonwealth People's Forum, and they were always much more interested in engaging with civil society once they learned that people from their country would be there. Conversely, they didn't see any real need to engage if they thought that civil society organisations would simply parachute in from London. This presented a challenge to Commonwealth organizations in terms of selecting their representatives to CHOGMs.

If lessons were to be learned for the future, these would have to include the need for more training to show civil society representatives how to engage with governments and to work the corridors of power. Previously it had been taken rather too much for granted that civil society knew how governments worked, and how to engage with them. It was clear also that direct connections between civil society and governments were essential, and that not all engagements should be routed via the Commonwealth Secretariat. That said, the Malta Commonwealth People's Forum was an example of how the efforts of civil society organisations could come together, and was a tribute to the vitality of the Commonwealth's civil society sector.

Daisy Cooper agreed that on the whole the Malta Commonwealth People's Forum had been successful, and had been a good experience for participants. Nevertheless she had some reservations about some aspects of the way the process had been organised.

There were two ways of looking at the Commonwealth People's Forum: the first as a self-contained event, and the second as the final stage of a process of consultation. The Malta Commonwealth People's Forum had clearly aimed at the second, and had been the culmination of an innovative series of consultations, reflecting the desire to mainstream civil society participation in the Commonwealth process. But there had been no real continuity of dialogue, and both the number and nature of the topics discussed had constantly changed. Thus the topics discussed at the UK consultation had been different from those discussed at the meetings around the Committee of the Whole, which again were different from those discussed at the Commonwealth People's Forum, and the sections of the final CPF Communiqué. As a result, there was little continuity, and the Communiqué issued after the Commonwealth People's Forum was by no means as pithy or as hard-hitting as it might have been. A second, related problem was that it was not clear what the nature of the interaction between civil society and governments should or could be. Civil society organisations gave their views on substantive issues, but governments seemed unable and unwilling to respond; unable (in hindsight) because they had not had any time to discuss let alone establish a governmental position themselves, and unwilling, as no-one commented on the substance of what civil society representatives put to them (instead, governments feebly endorsed the role of civil society with warm words). If the process were to be improved, three things clearly needed to happen. First, the civil society agenda needed to match the intergovernmental agenda, so that civil society could influence and monitor the intergovernmental agenda. (Notably absent from the workshops or plenary sessions were discussion of two key questions, the suitability of Uganda as the next host and the question of the next Secretary-General, both key issues for the Commonwealth, on which civil society could be expected to take a view.) Secondly, the civil society Communiqué would need to be merely finalised and tweaked at the Commonwealth People's Forum, rather than being started from scratch. And thirdly there needed to be an agreement that at the Committee of the Whole the chair should ask officials to comment on the communications from civil society, so that there was a definite commitment by governments to address the views and concerns of civil society.

In addition, there had been a number of logistical problems in relation to the Commonwealth People's Forum itself. There were very few Maltese High Commissions in other Commonwealth countries, which made it very difficult for some civil society representatives to obtain visas to attend the Commonwealth People's Forum; perhaps in future the offices of the Commonwealth Youth Programme might temporarily host High Commissions of the CHOGM host country, in order to get around this problem. Another problem was the sheer bureaucracy surrounding the registration process, with three different forms being required for each member of a civil society delegation. Further, the information received beforehand regarding such matters as transport and accommodation was very inadequate, making it very difficult for delegates particularly from outside the UK and Malta to plan their participation. Finally, in Malta itself all the plenaries and workshops were held in Valletta, but all the facilities such as free computers were some five miles away, with no shuttle bus laid on. For similar reasons, civil society organisations found that they had very little access to the media.

There were also a number of problems surrounding the make-up of civil society delegations. In some cases, those attending as civil society representatives were seen by others as mere pawns of their governments, and it was difficult to know how authentic some voices were. On the other hand, many grassroots organisations felt excluded. Some civil society representatives were almost professional lobbyists, who knew how to work the corridors, while others had little experience or know-how about interacting with governments.

The extent to which the Commonwealth's much vaunted partnership between 'grassroots' civil society and governments corresponded to reality was questionable. There had been little dialogue between civil society representatives and the Committee of the Whole. Civil society had had little chance of really affecting the CHOGM Communiqué, since the latter had not at any point been made public while it was still in draft. The meeting between civil society representatives and foreign ministers on the Saturday of the CHOGM was a useful innovation, but the idea of matching civil society representatives with ministers from their national governments excluded many people who attended the Commonwealth People's Forum as representatives of pan-Commonwealth organisations. Similarly, the idea of a meeting with President Museveni was better in theory than in practice, since this had consisted mainly of a lecture by the latter, with little time for questions or dialogue. Indeed, civil society representatives came away from the meeting feeling somewhat battered and bruised, as a result of Museveni's dismissive attitude in the albeit brief question-and-answer session (which consisted of answers to three questions) towards civil society organisations. In general, there was much talk of partnership between civil society and governments, but there was clearly a great deal of room for action on the parts of both civil society and governments, and improvement in the way this partnership was managed.

Stuart Mole thought that on the whole the Commonwealth People's Forum had been a successful meeting. There had been fears beforehand that the meeting would be disaggregated and disjointed (as to an extent was the case at Abuja), or that because of the timing there would be a complete severance between the official and unofficial gatherings; but these fears had proven largely unjustified. Indeed, he would go so far as to say that the meetings in Malta had shown that civil society organisations were changing, and becoming more professional and hard-headed in their interactions with the official Commonwealth.

One way of measuring the success of the Commonwealth People's Forum was to look at the reasons why civil society organisations decided to attend the gathering. One was clearly to interact with other civil society organisations, and here the value of the meeting was clear. A second was to interact with officials, foreign ministers, and heads of government. Here Malta was probably better than previous CHOGMs, though, as Daisy Cooper had said, there had been difficulties and limitations. A third reason was to interact with other forums (Business and Youth), and here there was clearly room for improvement. A fourth was to interact with the media, and again there was clearly room for improvement. Yet another reason for attending was to interact with the public. Here, while the cultural programme worked well and was well attended, the exhibitions had been something of a disaster in comparison with the innovative Commonwealth Village at Abuja, with few civil society organisations going to the trouble of having stalls, and very few members of the public coming to see them.

It was important, though, not to be too fixated on CHOGMs and Commonwealth People's Forums. What were the unofficial Commonwealth's hopes and expectations for the next two years? These could perhaps be dealt with under three headings: leadership, collaboration, and policy issues.

The Commonwealth had always been reliant on effective leadership. Over the last two years, there had been a lot of disquiet amongst civil society organisations about the quality of Commonwealth leadership offered in general, in all its dimensions. Effective national leadership was part of that. Heads of government, parliamentarians and political parties in all parts of the Commonwealth needed to do far more in terms of advocacy and raising the Commonwealth's profile. At the same time, the leadership given by the Chair of the Commonwealth had improved hugely under President Obasanjo, as compared with his two predecessors, and observers would be watching closely to see if Prime Minister Gonzi would follow in his footsteps. Similarly, the Secretary-General, Don McKinnon, had won many plaudits for his role at the recent CHOGM, but the big and as yet open question was whether a successor could be found in 2007 who would prove effective in the future. There was undoubtedly an important job for civil society organisations in promoting and discussing possible candidates, and shedding light on the process of appointment. The leadership role of civil society organisations in promoting the Commonwealth was also important, and should be developed.

Part of Don McKinnon's legacy would be the laudable way in which he had promoted collaboration between civil society organisations and the official Commonwealth. Ministerial meetings were now much more interactive (with the Edinburgh Education Ministers' Meeting of 2003 providing the best example of creative innovation). Nevertheless, as Daisy Cooper had emphasised, more needed to be done to make collaboration between the official and unofficial Commonwealths as effective as it could be. Civil society organisations should also develop much more effective collaboration with business, and indeed with each other. Sometimes they tended to be rather territorial, which often meant either duplication or allowing good initiatives to founder for lack of support. The Commonwealth Photographic Awards, for instance, were in danger of disappearing through lack of adequate funding.

In terms of policy, the Commonwealth needed to get rid once and for all of the idea that it was a niche organisation, only permitted to operate in certain areas where other international organisations were not active. Instead, the Commonwealth should take a lead in setting the international agenda, addressing all and any issues which concerned Commonwealth citizens. But a key role should remain the promotion of those shared values of democracy and good governance which since the Harare Declaration had been at the heart of the Commonwealth's mission. James Robbins had been right to suggest that Zimbabwe should remain a key concern for the Commonwealth. By the same token, the Commonwealth should watch developments in Uganda closely, and civil society organisations should support their civil society partners in the country, in order to help ensure a successful outcome. Here as elsewhere the Commonwealth should reject the counsel of those who urged too much caution; the Commonwealth should, if anything, be bolder in the future than it had been in the recent past.

• There was a good deal of discussion of funding for the Commonwealth Secretariat and Commonwealth Foundation, with several participants pointing out that it was difficult for the Commonwealth to be bold when its resources were so limited, and shrinking in real terms. It was pointed out that there was a fundamental flaw in the funding formula, whereby if a new member joined, the budget didn't increase but was merely re-sliced. The principle on which contributions were made had last been revised in 1989, and unlike the UN the Commonwealth had no automatic review. Several participants thought this the most urgent issue facing the Commonwealth, since without some increase in resources any plans for a more active Commonwealth role would be stymied from the start. Daisy Cooper agreed with this point, though she thought that the Commonwealth organisations should make clear what it was that they were asking for increased funding for. Governments were unlikely to agree to make new funds available without a clear sense of what the money would be spent on, and indeed without full and accurate progress reports.
• It was pointed out that collaboration between the official and unofficial Commonwealths had come a long way in recent years. As recently as the Cyprus CHOGM in 1993, representatives of civil society organisations had had to seek accreditation as media representatives.
• While there was support for the idea of the agenda for meetings of civil society organisations matching the intergovernmental agenda, it was suggested that part of the problem lay with the civil society organisations themselves, since they were often segmented, insistent on pursuing their own agendas, and sometimes unable easily to grasp the larger picture.
• By contrast, it was suggested that the Commonwealth could and should go much further in mainstreaming civil society engagement. For instance, civil society organisations would have much to say about the criteria for membership of the Commonwealth, and about any particular application for membership.
• The need for better follow-up of statements and recommendations from the Commonwealth People's Forum was emphasised. The Secretariat had robust systems in place for ensuring review of CHOGM outcomes, and similar mechanisms were needed for Commonwealth People's Forum outcomes.
• There was much discussion of the image of the Commonwealth, and the need to ensure that the Commonwealth 'sold' itself better through the media. Some participants thought that there seemed to be no coherent strategy to get the Commonwealth's messages across. This was thought crucial if the Commonwealth was to survive and prosper. It was all very well for Commonwealth cognoscenti to know about the good things the Commonwealth was doing, but unless this message could be got across to Commonwealth citizens, and particularly to young people, the Commonwealth was doomed to insignificance. Stuart Mole agreed very much with this point, though he suggested that the problem was more pronounced in Britain in particular, and in other 'ABC' countries in general, than in developing countries. The Commonwealth tended to be better understood where its impact could be seen. Nevertheless, he did think that much better leadership needed to come from national politicians across the Commonwealth, who typically did little to promote the Commonwealth and make its successes and advantages better known.
• There was some questioning of whether it was legitimate for civil society organisations to get too cosy with governments. For instance, a few Commonwealth countries included civil society representatives in their own delegations in Malta, but it was questionable whether such people could really still be described as civil society representatives. In response, Rudo Chitiga pointed out that many governments in developing countries were unable to take a stance on highly technical issues like climate change without civil society advisers. There were dangers of co-option, but there was usually a clear understanding that civil society representatives were there as advisers, not as decision-makers.
• A number of participants thought that the danger was less that civil society organisations would get too cosy with governments, than that some governments were still too frightened of civil society organisations, whom they saw as uncontrollable and inherently oppositionist. More needed to be done, particularly in developing countries, to persuade governments of the value of collaboration.

Session III: The Commonwealth after Valletta

Chair:
Richard Bourne
Chairman, The Round Table

Speakers:
Winston Cox
Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General

Winston Cox began by thanking the Round Table for giving him the opportunity to speak. The Round Table had suggested the melody - 'The Commonwealth after Valletta' - and had left it to him to supply the lyrics. He had a suspicion that the melody was not as straightforward as it appeared, and that it contained some coded bars on the relevance of the Commonwealth in the galaxy of international and multilateral organisations.

The landscape had changed quite dramatically since the modern Commonwealth had come into existence in 1949. At that time the UN was just four years old and the Pan American Union, which later became the Organisation of American States (OAS), was celebrating its first birthday. The Treaty of Rome that would create the EU was still eight years into the future; eleven years would have to pass before the OECD was established, and it would be fourteen years before the Organisation of African Unity came into being. Sub-regional organisations like CARICOM in the Caribbean, SADC and COMESA in Southern and Eastern Africa, ECOWAS in West Africa, the ACP and APEC, were not yet dreams in the sleep of their founding fathers. These were but a few of the active organisations competing for resources - time, money and personnel - and this was the world in which the modern Commonwealth existed. In such changed circumstances it was necessary and right to raise questions of its relevance.

When apartheid held sway in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia unilaterally declared its independence, no-one questioned the role of the Commonwealth. The organisation had a clear and compelling purpose: to bring to an end that evil system of government and that way of controlling and regulating human relationships and behaviour, and of limiting human achievements. That epic struggle was now part of the folklore of the Commonwealth. The greater therefore was the pity and the sadder was the irony that one of the beneficiaries of that struggle, Zimbabwe, had fallen short of the standards of the Harare Declaration, designed to set a new course for the Commonwealth: that of promoting democracy and good governance, human rights and the rule of law, gender equality, and sustainable economic and social development.

Apartheid had been dismantled, and like other organisations the Commonwealth had responded by changing its focus. That was why the Heads of Government, at their meeting in South Africa in November 1999, had established a High Level Review Group to examine the role of the Commonwealth and advise on how best it could respond to the challenges of the new century. Their recommendations were still relevant and the strengths of the Commonwealth were still the ones that the Group identified, namely: shared commitment to core values and principles; the diversity of its members combined with their shared history, language, legal systems, traditions, and commitment to the rule of law; the inter-governmental and people-to-people links; the consensual, informal and flexible ways of working; the global reach which gave the Commonwealth a unique place in addressing the problems of a changing world; inclusiveness, which helped it to advance the interests of its smaller and weaker members, whose voices would not otherwise be heard in international negotiations; and the ability to draw on the knowledge and resources of a vibrant network of professional and non-governmental organisations.

As a result of the report of the High Level Review Group the Commonwealth Secretariat was now working to a four-year Strategic Plan which faithfully reflected the recommendations of the Review Group combined with the globally pre-eminent millennium development goals (MDGs). The constantly changing global social, economic, and political situation meant that from time to time the Commonwealth Secretariat had had to shift its emphasis, but it had not had to deviate from its path. What modifications had been made had come about because most of the countries that were lagging behind on the MDGs were in the Commonwealth.

Here was the stark reality: over one-third of the Commonwealth's two billion citizens lived on less than US $1 per day (defined as absolute poverty), sixty per cent of global HIV/AIDS cases were in the Commonwealth (which was home to one-third of the world's population), and tuberculosis and malaria continued to take a high toll. About half of the world's 115 million children who could not attend primary school lived in the Commonwealth, and the majority of Commonwealth young people did not have the opportunity to realise their potential because of unemployment, poverty, HIV/AIDS or illiteracy. Most disastrous of all, it was Commonwealth women who bore the brunt of this deprivation; they constituted about 70 per cent of those living in poverty across the Commonwealth. It was unnecessary to enumerate the benefits that accrued to the family and to society when women were educated and empowered.

These statistics made clear why the Commonwealth had placed so much emphasis on poverty eradication. 'The poor you have with you always' was not a fundamental law of nature; rather it was an indictment of national and international policy failures. The richest 20 per cent of the world's population consumed 90 per cent of its wealth and the poorest 20 per cent consumed only 1 per cent; 14 per cent had no basic health service; 22 per cent had no access to drinking water; 13 per cent died before age 40; 33 per cent had no electricity; 18,000 children starved each day in a world where there was enough food to feed the world's population plus an additional 3 billion persons. There was a huge disparity in maternal mortality between the rich and the poor; 99 per cent of maternal deaths occurred in the developing world. This situation existed not because of lack of resources, but because policies at both the global and the national level had failed to direct resources where they were needed most. It was not surprising therefore that at Valletta the Heads of Government had reaffirmed their commitment to the MDGs.

Nowhere was this policy failure more evident than in the deeply disappointing outcomes of the WTO Ministerial Meeting recently concluded in Hong Kong. The disappointment would almost certainly have been even deeper but for the powerful 'Valletta Statement on Multilateral Trade' issued by the Commonwealth Heads of Government prior to the Hong Kong Ministerial Meeting, and but for the important roles played by Commonwealth Trade Ministers, two of whom were Deputy Chairs and three of whom were group facilitators during the meeting. But even with this less than satisfactory outcome Winston Cox was not yet ready to counsel despair. There had at least been an outcome, and during the next six months it was necessary to build on it. The Commonwealth Secretariat would therefore spare no effort to support the developing countries of the Commonwealth as they sought to fill in the details of the modalities that would lead to the conclusion of a trade round that put development at its centre. Time was short, however, as these details had to be in place by mid-year.

More debt relief and more and better aid were welcome but they were of limited value unless the industrial countries reduced their trade-distorting subsidies and opened their markets to the products of poor countries. Trade negotiators seemed only too often to be unaware of or to ignore the link between trade, debt, and poverty. Countries that could sell their goods and services at competitive prices in the international market by and large could also pay their debts. Countries with improving terms of trade would grow out of poverty, would transform their economies, and would experience increasing levels of economic participation. Countries with unfavourable terms of trade and no access to markets would enjoy none of these benefits; they would sink further into poverty and all that accompanied it. Increased trading opportunities were one of the most potent means for combating global poverty.

At Valletta the Heads of Government, through their 'Gozo Statement on Small and Vulnerable States', also reaffirmed their commitment to the Commonwealth as an organisation that gave voice to the poor and vulnerable. The Commonwealth would therefore continue to be a strong advocate for vulnerable small states and would continue to keep their concerns on the international agenda. Most pressing among these concerns were: the erosion of preferential trading arrangements that had occurred faster than anticipated; rapidly growing debt burdens; additional demands and compliance costs associated with global efforts to combat terrorism; increased environmental risks associated with more frequent and severe natural disasters; the spread of HIV/AIDS and its impacts; and rising levels of youth unemployment. In 2005 the Commonwealth Secretariat commissioned a Review of the 2000 Commonwealth Secretariat/World Bank Joint Task Force Report, and the Secretariat would follow this up with intensive consultations to ensure wide ownership of the conclusions and recommendations.

A third important outcome from Valletta was recognition of the need to bridge the digital divide, as reaffirmed in the 'Malta Declaration on Networking the Commonwealth for Development'. The need to bridge the digital divide was already recognised by the High Level Review Group and in the coming year the Commonwealth needed to work to make this commitment a reality. The Secretary-General would be establishing a Steering Committee of Commonwealth agencies and countries to work with the Commonwealth Secretariat in implementing the Commonwealth Action Programme on the Digital Divide. This exercise would take the Secretariat into areas of protocol, primacy, mandates, and resources, and would therefore have its own challenges. The Secretariat looked forward to grappling with them because of the importance of ICT in its work to help countries achieve the MDGs.

The Heads of Government gave the Secretariat three tasks which could probably be defined as new and on which the Secretariat would most definitely need the help of civil society organisations. The first of these (paragraph 26) was for the Secretariat to '…strengthen its interaction with other bodies that seek to build a common platform of unity against extremism and intolerance'. The Secretary-General, at the request of the Valletta CHOGM, would be exploring '…initiatives to promote mutual understanding and respect among all faiths and communities in the Commonwealth'. The second, on Commonwealth membership (paragraph 101), was the creation of a Working Committee at the appropriate political level to '…consider issues which may be relevant to the subject, and to report its findings to the next CHOGM'. The third, in the 'Valletta Statement on Multilateral Trade' (paragraph 17), was a call on the Secretary-General '…to explore innovative approaches to strengthen intra-Commonwealth dialogue, networking, and collaboration on trade and economic issues'. As the Secretariat approached these tasks the thinking of civil society organisations and concerned individuals would be most helpful.

For the most part the Valletta Heads of Government Meeting was a reaffirmation of the role of the Commonwealth. The three separate statements issued from the meeting were not new departures for the Secretariat. The well-established staples of the Secretariat's diet, its bread and butter issues, continued to be strengthening and promoting democracy and good governance, observing elections, supporting the rule of law, combating corruption, combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism, public service reform, and promoting sustainable economic growth and development. Other organisations were interested in these issues as well because, after the Commonwealth had charted the way, an established consensus had emerged on their relevance to the improvement of the human condition.

Winston Cox concluded by recalling that on hearing reports of his death, Mark Twain had famously quipped that they were an exaggeration. On hearing about the irrelevance of the Commonwealth in the modern world, Winston Cox was tempted to give the same reply. As long as there was poverty, disfranchisement, injustice, inequality, exclusion and discrimination, there was a need for an organisation like the Commonwealth. If it did not exist, perhaps there would not be the wisdom or the courage to create it - but the world would be poorer without it.

• Winston Cox was questioned on his attitude towards the idea that the creation of a level playing field in world trade would automatically make things easier for developing countries. In particular, it was pointed out that many countries would suffer greatly from the removal of trade preferences. In response, Winston Cox agreed that the situation was a complex one. It had been estimated, for instance, that Guyana would get some $8 million from debt relief on a date as yet uncertain; but that it would lose up to $40 million from the removal of trade preferences. The key point, though, was that the developed world's trade-distorting subsidies should also be removed: there should, for example, be symmetry between the treatment of sugar producers in the developing world and those in the EU, not asymmetry. The Secretariat was working closely with the World Bank and the IMF to look at ways of easing the impact of the dismantling of preferences, but much would depend on whether the developed world was willing to remove subsidies.
• Asked whether there was anything distinctive now about the Commonwealth in its macro- as opposed to micro-dimensions, Winston Cox pointed first to the flexibility and informality of Commonwealth procedures, which enabled it to work in ways that were difficult for other international organisations, and secondly, and relatedly, to its ability to pick up on issues long before they reached the agenda of other international organisations. The Commonwealth had, for instance, been way ahead of other international organisations on the debt issue, or on the problems of small states (which it had identified as early as the 1980s). A more recent example would be the clear link drawn by Manmohan Singh's expert group on development and democracy, between gender and development - again in a way that anticipated and led a change in global thinking.
• It was noted that the Valletta Communiqué had pledged to increase the funds available to the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation. Yet ten years before, at Millbrook, the Heads of Government had made a similar pledge, and very little had resulted. What grounds were there for thinking that this time the pledge would be made good? And what other sources of funding were available to the Commonwealth institutions? In reply, Winston Cox said that he very much hoped, and would like to believe, that the Heads of Government would make good their promises - though he thought it was incumbent both on the servants of the Commonwealth and on Commonwealth citizens to persuade them of the need to do so. On the second part of the question, he noted that over the previous five years the Secretariat had been able to attract some 20-30% more resources into the Commonwealth institutions, on top of the regular contributions from Commonwealth countries - mostly in the form of additional money from individual members states for specific programmes, but including also such additional resources as money from Iceland specifically for fisheries programmes.
• One participant recalled Bill Gates's remark that people living on $1 a day needed pencils, not laptops. Was overcoming the digital divide really a priority for the Commonwealth - and, if so, what could the Commonwealth do about it? In response, Winston Cox asserted that if people were only given pencils, they would continue to live on $1 a day. It was possible to learn to write with a laptop, but it was difficult to communicate with the rest of the world with just a pencil. Rather like those Marxists who had argued that it was possible for a country to make the transition from feudalism straight to communism, Winston Cox believed that it was possible to make the quantum leap from illiteracy to participation in the digital community. It was possible, for instance, to network a country with the latest mobile telephone technology, without first having to build an infrastructure of landlines. A lot of resources would be needed, but more important still would be the appropriate policy frameworks. This was an area where partnerships with business and other parts of the unofficial Commonwealth were of utmost importance.
• Winston Cox was asked whether he could give any clues as to the likely theme of the 2007 CHOGM in Uganda. He responded by saying that the discussions had hardly started - but that he hoped civil society organisations would make suggestions, and would indeed feel that they could have the opportunity to influence the choice of theme or themes. The ultimate decision lay with the host country; but the host government was very likely to take into account any good and widely-supported suggestions made to it.

Session IV: The Commonwealth, multiculturalism, faith and tolerance

Chair: Terry Barringer
Book Reviews Editor, The Round Table

Speakers: Philip Lewis
Visiting Lecturer, University of Bradford
Jenny Taylor
Director, Lapido Media
Andrew Firmin
Programme Manager, Commonwealth Foundation

Philip Lewis began by saying that in the last days of the Shah, as the Iranian revolution was unfolding, the only proposal made by the Central Intelligence Agency to investigate the religious dimension of the revolution was vetoed on the grounds that it would amount to mere 'sociology' - a term used in intelligence circles to mean time-wasting study of no political relevance. Twenty-five years on, the US Foreign Service Institute, the training arm of the Department of State, now required its students to study religion. With the collapse of the familiar binaries of the Cold War, the role of religion in conflict had grown even more significant. Indeed, R. Scott Appleby had estimated that some two-thirds of contemporary wars turned on issues of religious, ethnic, or national identity; less than 10 per cent began as interstate conflicts. Religion was now firmly back on the agenda, for academics as well as for policy-makers. Peter Berger had aptly described this as a process of 'de-secularisation'.

Bradford, with its large and growing Muslim population, provided an interesting case study in managing faith and diversity, and provided some good examples of how religious and secular traditions could collaborate for the common good. Bradford had been the site of two major riots, in 1995 and 2001, both of which had largely involved a young and disaffected underclass of British Pakistanis. The second riot had triggered a plethora of reports, most of which had concluded that Muslim and non-Muslim communities were living 'parallel lives', with effective segregation in language, culture, education and employment. In Philip Lewis's view, the case had sometimes been exaggerated - but it conveyed an important point. In addition, Bradford faced two additional problems since 2001: first, the election of four BNP councillors, intent on exacerbating the divisions, and secondly the increasing visibility of radical Islamic groups, such as Hizbat-Tahrir, particularly in university campus politics. It was clearly not helpful to conflate a growing problem of youth disaffection with Islamic terrorism. Nevertheless there was undoubtedly a crisis in the transmission of Islam in a relevant manner to a new generation of British Muslims. There had been a massive investment of time and energy by the Muslim community in mosque schools, with many young Muslims spending two hours a day, five days a week, in such schools between the ages of five and sixteen. Nevertheless, as important research by Dr Abdullah Sahin had shown, this generally had not contributed to a confident Muslim identity. While most young Muslim children started with a positive attitude to Islam and an 'exploratory identity', partly through the failure of Islamic religious teachers many ended with an identity which was either 'prematurely closed' (and therefore inflexible and incapable of responding to criticism) or 'diffuse' (and so open to manipulation).

Bradford offered some positive examples of good practice which might be transferable to elsewhere in the Commonwealth, particularly in the form of four initiatives which sought to build bridges across the divide. These were, first, a civic network initiative, which anticipated and sought to limit the damage to inter-communal relations in the city of a 7/7-type event; secondly, an attempt to contribute to a new leadership in Bradford which could move across the ethnic and religious divide; thirdly, attempts to address radical Islamic politics on a university campus; and fourthly, the beginnings of some work on conflict resolution involving British-educated 'ulama.

There were three particular influences behind the attempt to build a civic network in Bradford from June 2004. The first was the Madrid bombing on 11 March 2004, and the subsequent insistence by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner that a bomb in Britain was almost inevitable. In Madrid, an immediate public statement by the Mayor that the bombing was not the responsibility of any one religious or ethnic group had played an important role in preventing a backlash against the Muslim community. This inevitably prompted the question: did Bradford have in place people who could intervene in a similarly responsible way to dampen down tensions? The second influence was the seminal work of Ashutosh Varshney on ethnic conflict in India, which emphasised the city as the key unit of analysis, and which sought to explain why three cities (Aligarh, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad) had imploded into Hindu-Muslim violence after the Ayodhya debacle while three others (Calicut, Lucknow and Surat) had not, finding the answer in the presence or absence of a variety of robust cross-cutting associational forms of civic engagement. The third influence was more specific to Bradford, which was a recognition that the city enjoyed long periods of relative calm interspersed with regular disruptions which had tended to become more damaging and destructive over time. There were doubts that the underlying causes were being addressed - in particular, evidence of spatial segregation around class and ethnicity or religion, and correlations between youth, ethnicity, unemployment, crime, and turf wars, the latter often drug-related.

These triggers led to the co-convening by the Bishop of Bradford, a Professor of Peace Studies, and a leading local policeman, of sectoral groups across the city (education and youth, business, community and voluntary sector, faith groups, media, and politics and labour), with the emphasis in each being cross-communal participation. There was a particular concern to identify and incorporate young Muslim professionals, and to identify a new generation of actors in the city. The focus of the meetings was a reflection on how to respond if a Madrid-type outrage occurred, in such a way as to prevent an escalation of conflict - the key being a shared appreciation that any terrorist atrocity would be an assault on the whole community, and not an assault by one section of it on another. Those convening the meetings had been alarmed to find how little different groups had previously talked to one another - for instance, schools and colleges, or chambers of commerce and Asian businessmen. Nevertheless the meetings were in large measure a success, and particularly proved their worth on 7/7, when the different sectors were able to mobilise rapidly to enact a range of initiatives aimed at damping down inter-community tensions. The network had continued in existence after 7/7.

The Inter Cultural Leadership School (ICLS, more recently Intercultural Communication and Leadership School) had its origins in a suggestion from Geza Tessenyi from the Council of Europe, who had attempted something similar in post-conflict Bosnia. The idea was to bring together fifteen young people from Christian, Muslim and humanist backgrounds, who might act as role models and ambassadors to younger people in each of their communities, to craft a vocabulary to talk about difficult issues, within a safe and non-threatening environment. Each school lasted for four days, covering religious literacy, conflict resolution, leadership skills, and media skills. The first such school was a great success, and had been followed by the creation of an ongoing group of alumni, contributing to building a new leadership at ease with religious and cultural diversity and able to move across the major ethnic and religious divide in the city. Indeed, such was its success that to date seven such schools had taken place in Bradford, and the pattern was now being followed in other cities in Europe, such as Berlin, Rotterdam, and Lyons, as well as in Indonesia and Pakistan.

The problem of Islamic radicalism on university campuses had been brewing for some time, with groups such as Hizbat Tahrir preaching a doctrine of hate, and many intelligent Muslims now unwilling to attend university mosques because they were fed up with listening to anti-Western harangues. In contrast to the previous laissez-faire attitude, some important work was now being done in association with well-educated imams, to try to isolate the campus radicals, or at least to create spaces for other views to be heard. Among the initiatives taken, following the example of a London university chaplaincy, was the drawing up of written guidelines both for visiting speakers and for those delivering the khutba ('sermon') on Fridays, ensuring adherence to equal opportunities policy and mutual respect and understanding. Since the radical groups thrived on a perversion and misreading of Islamic ideas, there was also a great emphasis on study of the Qur'an - in order, for instance, to inculcate the Qur'an's references to Christians and Jews as Ahl al-Kitab ('People of the Book'), rather than the radicals' preference for the pejorative kuffar ('infidels').

Traditionally, most 'ulama working in Britain were neither equipped nor expected to undertake the public and civic roles which for a long time had been undertaken by their Christian counterparts; indeed, many embodied a Manichean discourse which demonised non-Muslim society. Now, however, there were signs of change, partly as the result of the rise of a generation of British-educated imams, some of whom were venturing out of the Muslim 'comfort zone' to become chaplains in prisons and hospitals, or engaging in community conflict resolution work. Though only in its early stages, some important work was now being done under the auspices of the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford, to engage these imams with police, family lawyers, and local community and advice agencies, in order to develop skills for working with conflict in Muslim families, and to open up discussion of sensitive issues such as forced marriages, family violence, divorce, and the distinction between Islamic prescriptions and cultural norms. This work was ongoing, and had been well received on both sides.

Philip Lewis concluded with a number of observations. First, he believed that in future it would not just be the US Foreign Service Institute which would insist on religious literacy as part of the toolkit for training professionals. Secondly, the Bradford experience showed the importance of creating safe spaces to enable people to work together to create a vocabulary to talk about sensitive issues. Thirdly, there was a need to re-open the relationship of politics and religion. As Jeffrey Stout had recently argued in an award-winning study of Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, 2004), democracy itself was a complex tradition which owed much to spiritual as well as secular sources. There was in particular a need to re-engage religious traditions in order to strengthen the ethical and moral imperatives in modern politics. Finally, there was a need for a new and deeper dialogue between religious and secular thinkers and policy-makers. The old paradigm of a hard, intolerant, doctrinaire secularism needed to be consigned to history, and replaced with at most a 'soft' secularism, which did not penalise religious actors or prevent them from engaging in debate.

Jenny Taylor said that she applauded Philip Lewis' work, for which she had the highest regard. In her view, the 'hard' secular attitude had been part of the problem, and could not be part of the solution. Multiculturalism worked, but only within a spiritual framework bigger than its component parts. However the top-down exercises described by Lewis could not alone solve what had to come from bottom-up, lived expressions of informed concern and friendship.

Jenny Taylor offered as an example of successful multiculturalism the area of London where her family lived, Finsbury Park. There was to be found enormous religious and ethnic diversity. Walking under the seven green bridges that span the Seven Sisters Road, the visitor would find a termite heap of human enterprise tracking outward across the globe: the London Council for Hajj and Umrah adjoining Josees Braiding Studio, where black women came for 'cornbows' and 'twists'; a shop offering Bulgarian Hot Meze next to a Cypriot-owned dry cleaners; a Lebanese tea-shop opposite glitzy bridal-wear shops frequented by rich Africans. Here was humanity in all its richness and diversity, much of its warmth fostered by unseen global networks of religious relationality, particularly the black churches.

Nevertheless, the cultural diversity of Finsbury Park had its darker side: just off Seven Sisters Road was the infamous Finsbury Park Mosque, where, before his arrest, Abu Hamza had preached his murderous creed, and where young men with beards could sign up for military training. Until recently, no-one had taken multiculturalism's darker side seriously; all that people had seen was the children in shalwar kameez mucking about, and fathers in bushy beards throwing them up in the air before taking them home for tea.

In order to be successful, multiculturalism needed a framework to bind people together - and that framework could only be spiritual. Religion literally means 'to bind'. But this could be double-edged: either it could bind by bonds of affection and respect - to use the Anglican Communion's expression - or it could bind to old ways of thinking and feeling through rituals of tatooing, scarring, animal sacrifice and ritual dedication to gods. Some spiritual vision had to hold the ring for every society.

Arguably, British society was now, in the form of intolerance and extremism, reaping the seeds sown by the secularist approach. In the 1980s and '90s, state funding for community groups had not been conditional on any wider commitment to shared values. As early as 1995 Jenny Taylor had herself warned in the book Faith and Power: Christianity and Islam in Secular Britain that discrete communities were emerging, not by accident but as the result of prevailing intellectual norms. Respect for the individual was held to entail a kind of absolutist respect for different cultures. What had begun as a post-Nazi ideal had ironically ended in ghettoisation. Secularism was incapable of delivering the vision which was necessary to bind communities to something outside themselves. Without a more nuanced understanding of religion and what it actually taught and delivered, multiculturalism inevitably ended in separatism. Tolerance of the intolerable was effectively a licence to lock up - or worse, to kill.

There had been signs of a sea-change in government thinking on these issues. A crucial departure was the creation of the Inner Cities Religious Council in 1992 after the worst mainland riots in British history. This forum of religious spokesmen (rarely women) was supported by a secretariat in the then Department of Transport (later Transport, Local Government and the Regions). Jenny's research uncovered a new religious discourse being used by civil servants who began to break the taboo against using religious language in dealing with the problems of inner cities, in order to engage with the real experiences of religious migrants. This began to permeate the whole of government, within five years. Indeed, quite contrary to the now outdated secularisation thesis, government ministers became required to consult faith groups in drafting any new legislation. This was an overdue recognition that the government could not govern in the inner cities. A language which incorporated the primary concerns and worldviews of people living there became essential. But the ICRC was the brain child of one civil servant sensitive to the spiritual - an Anglican Non-Stipendiary Minister in charge of Thatcher's new inner-city Task Forces.

The twentieth and twenty-first centuries had many examples of the failure of the secularist approach. In northern Uganda, for example, there had for twenty years been an ongoing, cruel, and appalling war, largely ignored in the West because its religious dimension did not fit easily with the prevailing rationalist and secular view, and Western governments simply did not have the language or the mental equipment to take its religious dimension seriously. But the example of northern Uganda showed that spiritual fear could only be addressed spiritually. Similarly, because of their secular mindsets, few Western scholars could really appreciate or begin to tackle what was going on in the minds of Muslim students. As the distinguished Sufi Muslim scholar Sayyed Hussain Nasr told the audience at the inauguration of the King Fahd Chair in Islamic Studies at London University on 11 March 1996: 'All he holds sacred is desecrated and torn apart in the name of rational process or anthropology.' The spiritual and psychological pain of people whose religious worldview was constantly being overlooked nevertheless had clear real-world consequences, as the recent spate of terrorist atrocities made only too clear.

In conclusion, Jenny Taylor asserted that the dominant secular paradigm of the late twentieth century had failed to provide a secure basis for a stable multiculturalism. There was a need for a massive programme of training in religious awareness and religious literacy, in order to develop the language and the sensibility to address the root causes of conflict. She hoped that the Commonwealth which offered forums that embraced many countries and cultures could play a key role in this process.

Andrew Firmin provided an outline of the Commonwealth Foundation's work in the area of diversity and tolerance, and a preview of what it hoped to accomplish. This was of course a new area of work for the Foundation, but one that would build on its history of engagement with and support for civil society. Indeed, the Malta Commonwealth People's Forum was the first such meeting to have had a discussion of issues relating to faith, although it was important to acknowledge Commonwealth antecedents, including work by the Royal Commonwealth Society and the Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit, particularly the series of 'Diversity Matters' meetings organized by CPSU. The Valletta Communiqué had spoken of the need to promote tolerance and respect. It was clear that this was an area where the continued input and involvement of civil society organisations would be crucial if the Commonwealth institutions were to make anything of their new-found interest in this area.

The Commonwealth's recent interest in faith issues had by no means been uncontroversial. Some people had argued that the Commonwealth was a secular institution and should leave such issues well alone. But it was clear not only that faith was central to the way many people lived and perceived the world, but also that in many Commonwealth countries faith-based organisations were key (and sometimes indeed the only) civil society organisations, and did work ranging from delivering services to sustaining identities. If you wanted to understand and engage with communities, you had to understand the things that mattered to them. Moreover, the Foundation's work in this area would build on work it had already done since the 1990s, on promoting people's participation and documenting and sharing experience and practice.

Issues relating to faith and tolerance had clearly moved up the political agenda as a result of the current global threat from terrorism. But it was clearly necessary to disentangle these issues from the security agenda. At the same time, there was a need to avoid a merely woolly view of faith, and indeed to challenge faith-based views where they may conflict with the agenda for development - as, for instance, over HIV/AIDS, or the role of women. Furthermore, if faith was used as the justification for conflict, then clearly all other aims (such as economic development, or the support of good governance) would fall by the wayside. Conflict inhibited development.

In Malta, the Foundation's meeting on faith and tolerance, which had been seen primarily as an opportunity for consultation, had been well-attended, with all sorts of civil society organisations involved. The overwhelming feeling was that this was indeed an area that the Foundation should get involved in, and that faith issues were a crucial dimension of existing aims, including development and the creation of better and more cohesive societies. A key recommendation which emerged was that the Foundation should set up a multi-faith advisory group to help advise on the faith dimensions of existing programmes, and to help in setting up new ones. A further recommendation was that the Foundation should facilitate the organisation of a multi-faith conference every two years as part of the Commonwealth People's Forum.

The Foundation's aim now - besides implementing these two key recommendations - would be to work in partnership with the Secretariat and other partners (for example, a Canadian-based NGO that the Foundation worked with was convening a meeting to look at ways of increasing participation by civil society from Islamic societies in multilateral processes later in the month); to support participation in training programmes and capacity-building of relevant organisations; and to produce case studies and share best practice. The programme was of course still very much in its early days, and there were a number of questions that needed to be looked at. But it was hoped that by the second half of 2006 the advisory group would be up and running and programme activities beginning, and that by the time of the Kampala CHOGM in 2007 the Foundation would have something substantial and positive to report.

• One participant recalled her experiences travelling on the London underground in the days following the 7/7 attacks. Fellow travellers had looked noticeably more nervous when they saw young Muslim men getting on the train. But when a group of young Muslim men dressed in the regalia of football fans travelling to matches joined, there was nothing but smiles and harmless banter. This - and indeed Jenny Taylor's description of the multicultural mix of Seven Sisters Road - suggested to her that in fact multiculturalism worked best when the meeting points were secular. Her own view was that violence had nothing to do with religion, but a great deal to do with the divide between 'haves' and 'have nots'. Surely faith was part of a wider debate on identity, of which faith was only one aspect? Philip Lewis responded to this point by saying that the two extreme positions, either writing off religion altogether, or suggesting that everything turned on religion, were equally unhelpful. Indeed, faiths were themselves complex and contested, and not amenable to simplistic views. But what he was concerned for was a mature engagement with religious issues. It was important to see religion as part of the solution, not just as part of the problem. Many Muslims, for instance, were themselves extremely worried about the rise of Islamic radicalism on university campuses. Jenny Taylor agreed with these comments, adding that it was unhelpful to talk about religion as a monolithic, reified thing. There had been no such view in the West before the Renaissance - before then, religion was part of everyday life, embedded in people's observance. Religion was in fact less about creeds than about the psychic reality as lived by many people. What she was opposed to was the kind of arrogant secularism which equated religion with backwardness, and assumed that for someone to have faith they were less than 'normal'.
• Another participant, while welcoming the initiatives outlined by Philip Lewis, wondered whether they might not be a case merely of preaching to the converted. The kind of people likely to take part in interfaith groups were, surely, by definition of fairly moderate disposition. The real question was how to reach and to engage with the extremists, who could be assumed to be hostile to the whole idea of engaging with people of other faiths. In response, Philip Lewis emphasised that this was a problem of which the organisers of these initiatives had been acutely aware. But on the one hand they had deliberately sought out people whose views were thought by others to be extreme, or who might be described as rough diamonds; and on the other they had sought to bring in the kind of young people who could connect with such individuals, or who might be seen by them as role models. The initiatives in Bradford had gone way beyond the local, moderate elites. Jenny Taylor added that difference was not something to fear but to embrace. True community was comprised of people who were different, not as seemed now to be the expectation, the same. Marriage was the ultimate community - comprised of opposites.
• One participant thought that in some areas it was necessary to challenge religious beliefs. In many developing countries, for instance, Christian views on marriage and contraception were a major obstacle to the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Jenny Taylor countered this view by arguing that the secular approach to AIDS prevention had failed dismally. She quoted from the Africa Commission's own Report to that effect (see p. 28) then went on to illustrate the point that where secularism came into conflict with local cultural-religious norms, a hard secularist approach seldom worked. She gave as an example latrine-building in the remote Jumla District of Nepal, where it was offensive to the gods to defecate in the same place twice. There, the secularist top-down approach based on denying the validity of local beliefs had failed, whereas the approach of a Canadian engineer who engaged with those beliefs after three years of simply living among the local people and winning their trust had worked. It wasn't the denial of the gods that worked, but his demonstration of a stronger god.
• A number of participants referred back to Matthew Neuhaus's observation that the Commonwealth, and indeed the international community more generally, had yet to develop an appropriate language for dealing with issues of faith and tolerance. It was suggested that a crucial distinction was between religion as a set of rules and institutions, and spirituality, as it was understood and experienced by ordinary people. In this sense, religion could get in the way of mutual understanding, whereas spirituality formed a common bond.
• There was also some discussion of the Commonwealth's role in promoting tolerance. It was pointed out that the affirmations repeated at Commonwealth day observances around the globe were not tied to any particular religion, but were ethical in nature. Perhaps the Commonwealth could build on these affirmations; perhaps, indeed, the Commonwealth could provide on a global level the kind of safe spaces that Philip Lewis had highlighted as being of such significance at a local level in Bradford.
• It was suggested that while in reality it had been the security situation which had led to this debate, it was important not to allow security issues to lead the debate. There had in the past been a good deal of reluctance amongst governments and international organisations to engage with these kinds of issues. This was perhaps realistic, since pious talk at the national or international levels seldom did much good. Intervention to promote greater understanding was most effective at the local level. While governments and international organisations could encourage such interventions, the most important role here was for civic networks, not for governments.

For an academic treatment of the contents of Jenny Taylor's paper, the reader is referred to her published writings, particularly: Faith and Power: Christianity and Islam in 'Secular' Britain (with L. Newbigin and L Sanneh; Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2005); 'After Secularism: British Government and the Inner Cities', in Predicting Religion: Christian, Secular and Alternative Futures (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); 'It's Establishment but not as we Know it', in Political Theology, 5.3 (July 2004), pp. 329-349; and 'Taking Spirituality Seriously: Northern Uganda and Britain's "Break the Silence" Campaign', in The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 94:382 (October 2005), pp. 559-574.

Session V: The Commonwealth, Africa, Development and the MDGs

Chair: Alexandra Jones
Director, Strategic Planning and Evaluation Division, Commonwealth Secretariat

Speakers: Ade Adefuye
Special Adviser, Commonwealth Secretariat
Myles Wickstead
Former Head of Secretariat, Commission for Africa
Ian Taylor
Senior Lecturer, University of St Andrews

Ade Adefuye began by saying that there was total complementarity between the globally-agreed Millennium Development Goals and the aims of the Commonwealth. Indeed, he would go so far as to suggest that the MDGs represented a projection onto the global scene of aims and aspirations which had long been the stated goals of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth's commitment to the entire package of the MDGs had been apparent from the start, had been confirmed at Coolum in 2002 and Abuja in 2003, and had been reaffirmed at the Malta CHOGM in 2005.

The Commonwealth had no alternative but to be fully committed to the Millennium Development Goals. Only four Commonwealth countries could unequivocally be described as 'developed', the other forty-nine being to a greater or lesser degree 'developing'. Of some two billion people in the Commonwealth, a third lived on less than $1 a day. Of 115 million children of primary school age in the world not in education, about half lived in Commonwealth countries. Of the many millions around the world affected by HIV/AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis, more than 60 per cent were to be found in the Commonwealth.

The MDGs focused on a series of measurable aims central to development - universal primary education, gender equality, reductions in infant and maternal mortality, reductions in the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, etc. But as Manmohan Singh's expert group had emphasised, the key aims of democracy and development were intertwined. There could be no meaningful and sustainable development without democracy, and vice versa. Given its limited resources and the nature of its expertise, it was natural that the Commonwealth should focus in particular on the democracy side of the equation, in order to help bring about the kind of political environment conducive to development - though this was not to say that the Commonwealth's impact on development issues as such had been unimportant.

The Commonwealth's commitment to the propagation of democratic values was longstanding, and its practical work in training and institutional support had been honed by decades of experience. One key area in which the Commonwealth had developed particular expertise was in election monitoring. There had been a time when the Commonwealth could have been criticised for merely parachuting into election situations for one or two weeks and then leaving again. This was no longer the case. Now the Secretariat was committed to coordinating and providing long-term assistance, from the registration of electors through training local observers, monitoring the elections themselves and assessing whether they had been free and fair, to, crucially, producing recommendations for improvement and mechanisms for following these up through monitoring implementation. This latter point fitted very well with the ethos of the MDGs, which was the need to monitor progress towards agreed goals.

Another area in which the Commonwealth had developed particular expertise, and where it could offer particular benefits, was through the good offices work of the Secretary-General. This was challenging work: conflict prevention was in many respects more difficult than conflict resolution, as well as being more cost-effective. But it was also not very conducive to publicity. By its very nature, it went on behind the scenes, and tended to become visible only when it failed. Nevertheless the Commonwealth had done some very useful work in this area, and had facilitated peaceful changes in leadership in many countries in Africa. Given the very large sums spent on armaments in many developing countries - money which could otherwise be employed in reducing poverty and promoting development - the link between peace-building and development was clear.

As well as its work in relation to promoting democratic values, however, the Commonwealth also had an important role to play in relation to the international economic environment. Central to this work was the Commonwealth's commitment to the promotion of a level playing field in global trade. Farmers in Africa and elsewhere were very badly hit by the developed world's subsidies to its own farmers. On the other hand, a level playing field would enable the developing world to trade its way out of poverty. The 'Valletta Statement on Multilateral Trade' had been a robust contribution to the global economic debate, and (along with the activities of trade ministers from around the Commonwealth) had perhaps prevented the Hong Kong Ministerial Meeting from being as bad as it might otherwise have been. Likewise, the Commonwealth's lead on debt reduction had been invaluable. Many African countries were saddled with unmanageable debts, which took resources away from development, and the Commonwealth's stance had produced real results. Yet other areas where the Commonwealth had been able to make a difference were in highlighting the importance of gender issues, and of empowering women as a key to development; in working to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, such as through the innovative Ambassadors for Life programme; and in drawing attention to the particular problems faced by small states. More than half of Commonwealth countries could be classed as small states, pushed to the fringes of the international economy, and the Commonwealth had done valuable work both in highlighting their problems and in building their capacity to compete in the global arena.

Ade Adefuye concluded by re-emphasising that the MDGs - which aimed not just to reduce poverty, but to eradicate it altogether - fitted squarely with the Commonwealth's own longstanding aims. The MDGs were particularly relevant to an association so many of whose citizens lived in poverty. In future the Commonwealth institutions would continue to intensify their activities, in partnership with other organisations, to achieve the noble aims embodied in the MDGs.

Myles Wickstead began by outlining the origins of the Commission for Africa. The Millennium Development Goals had been established at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, with a clear series of developmental targets, many of them to be achieved by 2015. But it had soon become clear that while some countries (including China, India, and many countries in South and East Asia) were making good progress towards the goals, others (especially in Africa) were being left behind. The primary aim of the Commission for Africa had therefore been to discuss and recommend ways in which progress towards those goals could be speeded up. A secondary, but related, aim had been to offer a fresh and positive perspective on Africa, contrary to the miserable picture painted by large parts of the Western media. Africa had in fact made a lot of progress in the last few years - as witnessed by the creation of the African Union, NEPAD, etc. Twenty-five years before, only three African countries had been democracies, whereas now thirty-three were. There were also many fewer conflicts than there had been twenty-five years before. The ethos of the Commission for Africa was therefore not one of what the developed world could do for Africa, by way of charity, so much as what changes in the international system could help Africans to help themselves.

While the primary impetus behind the creation of the Commission for Africa had come from the British government, great care had been taken not to give the impression that the initiative would be British-led or indeed primarily Anglophone. Hence, of seventeen members of the Commission, nine were from different regions in Africa, including Francophone Africa and North Africa. Crucial to the Commission's work had been a lengthy and in-depth process of consultation, in Africa and beyond. It was deliberately decided not to begin writing the report until the beginning of 2005, and the task was completed within three months.

It had become clear as a result of the Commission's consultations - as indeed it had been clear to Myles Wickstead himself when he had in 1997 been asked to write the first UK white paper on development for many years, based on the International Development Targets, the forerunners of the MDGs - that it was impossible to achieve targets in areas such as health and education without the necessary infrastructure and capacity, including political stability, transparent and accountable government, efficient tax systems, sustainable economic growth, and so on. This integrated approach was reflected in and endorsed by the Commission for Africa report: unless all the relevant issues were addressed, they would all fail. Hence the report started off with a section on culture and heritage (since it was important to understand the context) and then moved on to governance, peace and security issues; economic growth, the private sector, and trade issues; and finally issues around aid, debt, and the more conventional bread-and-butter issues of development. The report made a very large number of recommendations, some ninety in total.

It was interesting that in 2005 all the threads came together, with the British presidency of the EU and the G8, and strong support from civil society organisations, the media, and the private sector - so that 2005 really was the year of Africa, in a more profound way than was usually the case when the international community decided to focus on a specific region or set of issues. The Gleneagles summit of the G8 had been very positive (especially on debt, though less so on trade), with the leaders of the developed world adopting some two-thirds of the Commission's specific recommendations. Tony Blair had very cleverly insisted on the leaders signing their agreement in front of the cameras, so that the event became as much a contract between governments and the public as an agreement between the leaders themselves. Great progress had been made on commitments, and the question now was how to turn commitments into implementation and delivery.

There were several areas in which the Commonwealth could help. First, there were undoubtedly specific issues where the Commonwealth had particular expertise, or which were likely to get lost unless people pushed for implementation. Examples might be the development of higher education; technical capacity-building; governance issues; or the encouragement of a responsible but critical media, which was undoubtedly a key component in bringing about open and accountable government. Both the Commonwealth institutions and Commonwealth civil society could play key roles in relation to such issues. Secondly, the Commonwealth might be able to develop closer links with La Francophonie, in order to throw a clearer light on how to work within different legal systems and frameworks, and so that African countries could the better learn from each other. Thirdly, it was important to develop a positive dialogue with the African diaspora, but as the Commission had found it was sometimes difficult to ascertain who were the representative people. Again this was an area where the Commonwealth network could play an important role in taking matters forward. Finally, the Commonwealth institutions and civil society and business networks could maintain the momentum by keeping the issues raised by the MDGs and the Commission for Africa high on their own agendas. Myles Wickstead hoped, for instance, that the Kampala CHOGM in 2007 would address many of these issues. Indeed, Uganda itself was a very good example of a country where deregulation and unleashing the private sector had led to impressive economic growth, and much could be gained by other developing countries if the Kampala CHOGM were to focus on the role of business and civil society in development.

Ian Taylor said that the aim of his presentation was to set out some of the challenges facing the Commonwealth in advancing the Millennium Development Goals in relation to Africa. Over 660 million people in the Commonwealth lived on less than $1 a day, making the Commonwealth home to more than half of the world's poorest people. The seven countries in the world most affected by HIV/AIDS were in the Commonwealth. In a number of Commonwealth countries, less than 35 per cent of children completed primary education. The MDGs set out an ambitious programme for poverty reduction. However, as Gordon Brown had recently pointed out, if the present trajectories continued, the MDGs had no chance of being met: indeed, on present trajectories, primary education for all would not be achieved until 2130, the halving of poverty would not be achieved until 2150, and the elimination of preventable infant deaths would not be achieved until 2165. At the recent Malta CHOGM, the final Communiqué had a number of things to say about the MDGs. However, in Ian Taylor's view, the Communiqué reflected a failure to face up to the main obstacles facing any successful meeting of the goals, and instead replicated past orthodoxies that pinned the hopes of the developing world on the munificence of the developed, through the medium of aid. Unless the Commonwealth grasped the nettle of the nature of politics in many developing countries, particularly in Africa, the MDGs were unlikely to be met, there was unlikely to be any radical overhauling of the global system, and current inequalities were likely to be perpetuated.

In Ian Taylor's view, the real challenges facing Commonwealth Africa in meeting the MDGs could be summarised under three headings: first, the misplaced consensus around the efficacy of aid; secondly, the scale of resource outflows from Africa; and thirdly, the problem of governance modalities in Africa. He recognised that Africa was a large continent, and that these factors varied in intensity from country to country; he recognised also that Africa had to work with the legacies of colonialism and the Cold War, and within global trade structures over which African countries had little control. Nevertheless, he was convinced that the current orthodoxy on development, which underpinned both the MDGs and the Commonwealth's response to them, needed radical rethinking if the problem of global poverty was to be seriously tackled.

Current Commonwealth statements appeared to be essentially centred around the doubling of aid: getting wealthy countries to meet the UN goal of spending 0.7 per cent of their gross national income on overseas aid was central to the Commonwealth's position. The premise behind this was that a lack of aid had produced or at least exacerbated Africa's situation, and that aid and growth were linked. This assumption had been central to the work of the Africa Commission, DfID, NEPAD, the World Bank, and so on. But this confidence was misplaced. As Richard Dowden of the Royal African Society had pointed out, 'Africa has had around a trillion dollars of aid in the last fifty years, roughly $5,000 for every African living today if distributed evenly at today's prices. If aid were the solution to Africa's problems, it would be a rich continent by now'. Many Africans - for instance, the respected Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda - agreed with this analysis. While there had been some academic studies which supported the linkage between aid and growth - notably a widely-cited study by Craig Burnside and David Dollar, published in the American Economic Review in 2000 - there were plenty of other studies which disputed the basis of these findings and disproved the link. Indeed, between 1970 and 2000, aid had increased dramatically, but economic growth rates had slowed equally dramatically. Of course, humanitarian aid should continue. But more careful studies were needed before assuming that aid would lead to long-term, sustained economic growth. Given the well-attested scale of corruption in Africa, increased aid arguably served only to strengthen predatory elites, and hence the obstacles to real growth. For instance, in 2005, Nigeria's recently-established anti-corruption commission estimated that between 1960 and 1997, a total of £220 billion was skimmed off or 'misused' by Nigeria's elites - a sum equivalent to 300 years of British aid donations.

Another problem which received very little attention from the international aid agencies was the issue of resource outflows. Leonce Ndikumana and James Boyce had estimated in 2002 that total capital flight from thirty sub-Saharan African countries between 1970 and 1996 amounted to $187 billion - or about 145 per cent of the debts owed by those countries. As far back as 1990, the Lagos National Concord reported that Nigerians held £32 billion in foreign bank accounts, equivalent to Nigeria's then foreign debt. A more recent study had estimated that around 38 per cent of Africa's private wealth was held outside the region. Indeed, the much-publicised G8 deals on debt cancellation and aid were likely to be dwarfed by the growth in capital outflow. Clearly questions needed to be asked about tax evasion and capital flight, and the international community ought to be doing much more both to encourage internal investment and to track down and return illicit capital flight from Africa. Interestingly, Western governments had been quite capable of tracing al-Qaeda funding and getting the banking industry to freeze such accounts. Why could the international community not spend the same amount of energy advancing Africa's cause? Shamefully, the UK , Canada, New Zealand, India, Jamaica, and many other Commonwealth countries had not yet ratified the UN Convention against Corruption - unlike ten African countries. Almost half of the world's tax havens were British territories or dependencies, or Commonwealth countries. Thus the Commonwealth should be taking the lead in co-ordinating international action to shut down tax havens, eradicate banking secrecy, develop enforceable and energetic structures to identify where the illicit capital stolen from Africa was now residing, and return this to the continent. As yet, however, there appeared to be little evidence either of a common purpose or of determination to tackle the problem.

Underpinning all this, the Commonwealth's approach to Africa and its problems appeared to be grounded in a naïve and inaccurate understanding of the nature of the state in Africa. For a good number of years, academic studies of politics in sub-Saharan Africa had emphasised the 'neopatrimonial' nature of the state in these countries. In large parts of Africa, the Western model of the state was (unsurprisingly) absent. Instead, and despite the appearance of rational-bureaucratic rule (hence 'neopatrimonialism' rather than 'patrimonialism'), governance was performed through the exercise of personalised exchange, clientelism, and rent-seeking. Corruption was internalised, and constituted the essential lubricant for decision-making; the public and private were habitually not detached; and resources were deployed primarily to maintain legitimacy. This explained the profound reluctance of African leaders to give up power, since without state resources it was impossible to maintain status. Politics in Africa thus tended to be a zero-sum game: those outside this patronage loop, and, equally importantly, nebulous concepts like national development and long-term strategies, were peripheral. This system was by its nature profoundly anti-capitalist and anti-developmentalist, resting instead on a vast and unproductive network of patronage. Indeed, investment in infrastructure and the advancement of policies that would advance long-term national development of the sort that would be aimed at achieving the MDGs was not seriously on the agenda of many African governments. Productive economic activities and notions of long-term investment were generally sidelined in favour of immediate consumption and resource diffusion. To ignore these realities, or to pass systemic features off as simply surface phenomena ('corruption' or 'malgovernance'), was to condemn the best efforts of the international community to failure.

It was clear that the malady affecting Africa was political and not simply economic. A huge injection of aid resources, as currently advocated by the Commonwealth and other international organisations, would in present circumstances simply strengthen the position of Africa's elites, rather than contributing to positive change. In the final analysis, Africa's struggle to recover from its myriad crises would be dependent upon its own citizens. The Commonwealth might be able to help, through pressing for more open trade, addressing illicit capital flights, and encouraging its members to target development assistance in a more coherent and stricter fashion (such as helping build trade capacity). Fundamentally, though, a far more politicised development policy was called for. Donor nations needed a firmer understanding of the political economy within recipient countries; they should seek to endow civil society with greater effectiveness in the policy process (while recognising that patronage and clientelism existed also within civil society); they needed to bear in mind the patronage potential of various policy instruments, and formulate their assistance accordingly; and they should encourage policies which would build up a prosperous middle class with a stake in economic and political stability (whilst safeguarding the interests of the poor). Whether the Commonwealth, with its 'family' ethos and its characteristic as a club of elites, would prove willing to replace the current cosy charade by a more politicised and fraught set of relationships and interactions, of course remained to be seen.

• It was pointed out that the Commonwealth was in fact, particularly at the behest of Nigeria, working with other international organisations to provide robust guidelines on corruption and the capital flight issue. The Secretariat had produced an important document setting out best practice guidelines for fighting money laundering, and was working closely with African governments to bring about the necessary legislative changes. In response, Ian Taylor drew a distinction between rhetoric and reality. The UK, for instance, had made a number of statements on this issue, but its record had been disgraceful. Huge amounts of money filched from Africa (or indeed from Russia) had made its way through London or various of the British dependencies.
• A number of participants thought that more emphasis should be given to the NEPAD initiative, which showed the desire of African leaders to take ownership of finding a solution to the continent's problems. In response, Ian Taylor agreed that the rhetoric of NEPAD was laudable, particularly in its recognition of the need for governments to be more accountable. But he was sceptical of grand declarations, and felt that the jury was still out on whether this particular one would lead to real change. The record since the 1970s was in his view not particularly hopeful. Ade Adefuye and Myles Wickstead, by contrast, were more optimistic. In their view, NEPAD represented a genuine attempt by African governments to set their own houses in order, and one which should be supported by the international community, though Myles Wickstead added that he hoped that tensions between the AU and NEPAD could be resolved, and that the sooner NEPAD could be brought within the framework of the AU the better.
• Ade Adefuye also took issue with Ian Taylor's view on the efficacy of aid. In his view, it was important to disaggregate the data. Much of the evidence which Ian Taylor had cited referred to the period of the Cold War, when African dictatorships had been the recipients of large amounts of largesse, particularly from the West, which inevitably they spent on arms, or secreted into their own bank accounts. The situation could not be compared with that of African democracies struggling to find the resources to meet the most basic education and health needs of their citizens.
• Myles Wickstead agreed that the issue of capital flight needed to be tackled more vigorously, but was encouraged by steps being made in the right direction, particularly by Africans themselves. He also agreed with Ade Adefuye's point, that the situation in 2006 could not be compared with the situation twenty or thirty years previously. Regarding Africa's own resources, he recalled that Julius Nyerere used to refer to Africa's natural resources as its curse. Without the right governanace structures in place, the exploitation of those resources had brought great misery; with the right structures in place, they could help lift the continent out of poverty.

Participants: Prof Ade Adefuye, Special Adviser, Political Affairs Division, Commonwealth Secretariat; Dr Victoria te Velde-Ashworth, Former Graduate Student, Institute of Commonwealth Studies; Amitav Banerji, Director and Head, Office of the Secretary-General, Commonwealth Secretariat; Terry Barringer, Book Reviews Editor, The Round Table; Sir Nicholas Bayne, Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics; Richard Bourne, Chairman, The Round Table; Rudo Chitiga, Deputy Director, Commonwealth Foundation; Daisy Cooper, Acting Head, Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit; Stephen Cox, Executive Secretary, The Royal Society; Winston Cox, Deputy Secretary-General, Commonwealth Secretariat; Joseph Croft, Co-ordinator, Stakeholder Democracy; Andrew Firmin, Programme Manager, Culture and Diversity, Commonwealth Foundation; Derek Ingram, President Emeritus, Commonwealth Journalists' Association; Alexandra Jones, Director, Strategic Planning and Evaluation Division, Commonwealth Secretariat; HE Christopher Kolade, High Commissioner for Nigeria; Philip Lewis, Visiting Lecturer, Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford; Peter Lyon, Reader Emeritus, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, and Former Editor, The Round Table; Sir Peter Marshall, Former Chairman, Joint Commonwealth Societies' Council; Alex May, Hon Secretary/Treasurer, The Round Table; Colin Milner, Australian Special Representative to Nauru; Stuart Mole, Director-General, Royal Commonwealth Society; Martin Mulligan, Journalist, Financial Times; Matthew Neuhaus, Director, Political Affairs Division, Commonwealth Secretariat; Alastair Niven, Principal, Cumberland Lodge; Josephine Nyamekye-Marfo, UK Chair, Commonwealth Journalists' Association; Alan Pottinger, Technical Director, Commonwealth Forestry Association; James Robbins, Diplomatic Correspondent, BBC News; Mark Robinson, Visiting Fellow, St Antony's College, Oxford; Lindsay Ross, Executive Director, Commonwealth Press Union; John Rowett, Secretary-General, Association of Commonwealth Universities; Aimé Sangara, Head of Public Affairs, Royal Commonwealth Society; Prue Scarlett, Chairman. LEPRA; Hon Consul for Samoa; Victoria Schofield, Writer and journalist; Tim Shaw, Director, Institute of Commonwealth Studies; Nicholas Sims, Reader in International Relations, London School of Economics; Elizabeth Smith, Secretary-General, Commonwealth Broadcasting Association; Ian Taylor, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of St Andrews; Jenny Taylor, Director, Lapido Media; Zoë Ware, Winner, 2005 Harry Hodson Memorial Prize; Myles Wickstead, Former Head of Secretariat, Commission for Africa; Andrew Williams, Editor, The Round Table.

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