Moot Resources

The Moot is the name of the Editorial Board that supports The Round Table journal, as well as organizing occasional seminars, meetings and conferences on themes of Commonwealth interest.

High-Level Review

2009 - The Eminent Persons Group

Further Reading: A Great Global Good? - Reviewing the modern Commonwealth

The review of Commonwealth institutions and processes, announced by Heads of Government in Trinidad & Tobago at their meeting of November 2009, will be spearheaded by an unusual body. There is to be no select high-level group of Heads who will meet on the eve of the 2011 summit to put the finishing touches to a year's worth of solid work by a representative band of senior government officials. Rather, an Eminent Persons Group (EPG) will be appointed.

The only previous EPG was established nearly twenty-five years ago with a formidable but specific remit: to promote negotiations between all the principal parties for an end to the system of apartheid in South Africa. While the new EPG will have a more prosaic task ahead of it, it is to be hoped that it will share some of the key characteristics of its predecessor. Although member governments will undoubtedly forward their nominations of suitably experienced and eminent men and women to the Secretary-General, EPG members should not be beholden to governments, offering the Secretary-General no more, and no less, than their judgement and insights.

The independence and stature of EPG members should encourage a more free and detached examination of the issues, and an open style of working. Given that the remit of the group so clearly covers civil society and non-government actors, as well as the intergovernmental institutions, it is obviously important that EPG members should be recruited from a broad range of backgrounds and skills, including from civil society. They should also be seen to listen to the widest possible range of opinion and, some have suggested, be served by a staff team drawn from both the Commonwealth Secretariat (representing the official Commonwealth) and the Commonwealth Foundation ( with its remit for promoting civil society)

Stuart Mole, November 2009

A Great Global Good? - Reviewing the modern Commonwealth

The Commonwealth has been much reviewed in recent times, with the lofty pronouncements of 'high-level' reviews in turn spawning further, and more specific, evaluations and enquiries within the Secretariat in particular. Thus the 1991 High-Level Review encouraged the then Secretary-General, Emeka Anyaoku, to set in train an extensive internal management review, looking at structures and staffing; followed by a comprehensive job evaluation of individual posts; and a review of staff terms and conditions of service. This was accompanied by a major overhaul of the Secretariat and its relationship to its development arm, the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation (CFTC), and to its youth wing, the Commonwealth Youth Programme (CYP). The virtually autonomous budgets of these various bodies were brought together within a common system of planning, scrutiny and governance.

Root-and-branch reviews are inevitably costly, in terms of time and resources, diverting attention from other priorities and encouraging introspection and institutional paralysis. They are not to be embarked upon lightly.

At the same time, the election of each new Commonwealth Secretary-General - Kamalesh Sharma is now the fifth - offers the opportunity for a fresh start and for new leadership. Perennial and seemingly intractable problems re-surface in the hope that they might at last be capable of solution. Mounting frustration and unhappiness with the impact and profile of the Commonwealth can be absorbed in new debate. And the Secretary-General himself, with his internal compass set, will need the support of member governments and other allies if his ambitions for his time in office (now a maximum of 8 years) are to be realised.

The 1991 High-Level Review grew out of recognition that the Commonwealth, so long consumed by campaigning against racism in Southern Africa (and apartheid in particular), would need to find new purpose and unity beyond these issues in the decades ahead. The organisation also needed to acknowledge the charge of some its critics that, within its own membership, it was failing to live up to its espoused principles.

The process of debating these first principles - such as Heads of Government conducted in Harare in 1991 - led to far greater consequences than those involved could ever have imagined. At the start of the 90s, it ushered in a decade of democratic development in the Commonwealth; and the creation of a groundbreaking mechanism - the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group - for upholding the association's values and principles among its membership.

The Coolum High-Level Review, of 2002, was driven by more organisational concerns and was hampered by the postponement of the 2001 Commonwealth summit in Brisbane in the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks of 9/11. Nevertheless, it resulted in reasonably significant internal reforms in the Commonwealth Secretariat and to its governance arrangements; and, externally, encouraged the growth of a new relationship between the intergovernmental and the 'people's' Commonwealth.

The 2009 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Trinidad & Tobago again set the review process in motion, some seven years after Coolum. But the summit's voluminous communiqué and other statements revealed important differences from the reviews of 2002 and 1991.

  • First, with its concentration on institutions and processes - rather than policies and priorities - the emphasis now seems to be on how the Commonwealth can achieve effective delivery of its programmes, rather than a more fundamental re-examination of what its purposes should be.
  • Secondly, there has been no attempt to confine this enquiry to the official, intergovernmental Commonwealth. Instead, in referring to all Commonwealth institutions, leaders seem to be taking a more wide-ranging and holistic approach, recognising that improved delivery, collaboration and partnerships will inevitably involve straddling the government-civil society divide in the pursuit of more flexible working arrangements. This would be entirely consistent with the recognition in Port of Spain by Heads - for the first time - of "the important role that civil society plays in our communities and nations as partners in promoting Commonwealth values and the interests of the people".(1)
  • Thirdly, Heads of Government have resurrected an intriguing instrument for conducting much of the work of the review. There is to be no select high-level group of Heads who will meet on the eve of the 2011 summit to put the finishing touches to a year's worth of solid work by a representative band of senior government officials. Rather, an Eminent Persons Group (EPG) will be appointed. The only previous EPG was established nearly twenty-five years ago with a formidable but specific remit: to promote negotiations between all the principal parties for an end to the system of apartheid in South Africa. While the new EPG will have a more prosaic task ahead of it, it is to be hoped that it will share some of the key characteristics of its predecessor. Although member governments will undoubtedly forward their nominations of suitably experienced and eminent men and women to the Secretary-General, EPG members should not be beholden to governments, offering the Secretary-General no more, and no less, than their judgement and insights. The independence and stature of EPG members should encourage a more free and detached examination of the issues, and an open style of working. Given that the remit of the group so clearly covers civil society and non-government actors, as well as the intergovernmental institutions, it is obviously important that EPG members should be recruited from a broad range of backgrounds and skills, including from civil society. They should also be seen to listen to the widest possible range of opinion and, ideally, be served by a staff team drawn from both the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Foundation.

The shape of this new review is unlikely to be clear before June or July 2010. That is why the Round Table was pleased to have anticipated these developments and to have devoted the one of its special Centenary conferences - that at Cumberland Lodge in January 2010 - to a critical study of Commonwealth institutions and processes.

The conference examined four key elements.

  • First, it explored the leadership of the organisation through its three principal offices - the Headship, the office of Chairman and the position of Commonwealth Secretary-General. Significant changes can be expected before long and there was scepticism about the durability of three offices, as opposed to two; though there were differing assessments of which position should disappear. Certainly, there was a strong desire to see a more activist and assertive role for the Secretary-General.
  • Secondly, the capacity of the Commonwealth Secretariat and the other intergovernmental institutions to be 'fit for purpose' and attuned to the delivery of tangible outcomes was much debated; as were the miniscule resources devoted to Commonwealth programmes and the absence of a overriding signature issue capable of defining a highly diverse global organisation like the Commonwealth.
  • Thirdly, the meeting considered the Commonwealth's consultative function - its summits and ministerial meetings, and the growing interaction between the official and other sectors (business, youth, and civil society). Change is clearly in the air - but will this simply result in a contraction of the traditional meetings of ministers of finance, foreign affairs, law, education, youth and women's affairs (and the rest)? Or could the Commonwealth develop new ways of working which integrate government and civil society to a much greater degree and which make full use of new information technologies?
  • Finally, as the voice of Commonwealth civil society (CSO) grows stronger, the meeting anticipated that there would be fresh demands for the greater involvement of CSO organisations in decision-making and programme delivery; possibly as part of a new Commonwealth 'social contract' between governments and citizens. This in turn is likely to lead to the greater scrutiny of the health of civil society organisations, their attachment to the principles of good governance and accountability and their own 'fitness' for purpose.

    • Interwoven with all these themes were, inescapably, questions of profile and image, policy and priority. Coupled with the Secretary-General's own vision of the task ahead, all this became the stuff of the conference's final report: "A Great Global Good - reviewing Commonwealth institutions and processes". (2)

    The report is thus highly relevant to the work of this latest review and will, it is hoped, help set its agenda. The Round Table's two chapters - one in Bangladesh and one in Australia - are expected to hold similar conferences later in the year, taking the debate forward; and a formal submission will be made to the Eminent Persons Group by the Round Table once the EPG begins its work.

    It was Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma who coined the description of the Commonwealth as 'a great global good'. But as he acknowledged at the Cumberland Lodge conference: "Where it is great it can be better; where it is global, it can be more so; and where it is good, it must improve". (3)

    Stuart Mole

    Stuart Mole is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board. He is a former Director-General of the Royal Commonwealth Society and former Director of the Secretary-General's Office in the Commonwealth Secretariat.

    Footnotes

    1. The Trinidad & Tobago Affirmation on Commonwealth Values and Principles
    2. Copies available from the author
    3. "A Great Global Good?" p.19 - View document

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