SO THE Commonwealth Secretariat is carrying out a new mandate to help raise the profile of the 54-nation group as a very relevant partner of the global community in the quest to forge a better life for the citizens of the world. Acting on a decision of the 2009 Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference in Port-of-Spain, a ten-member Eminent Persons Group (EPG) will shortly begin a work programme tasked on coming forward with “decisive recommendations on how to strengthen the Commonwealth and fulfil its potential in the 21st century.” The EPG, representative of the various regions that comprise almost a third of the world’s population, will be carrying out their mandate consistent with the spirit of previous high-level consultative groups that had made recommendations on such burning issues as ending of a then apartheid governance system in South Africa, and addressing vulnerability challenges of small states in the global society. There has also been a major study, initiated by the Commonwealth Foundation and involving civil society across the various regions, focused on “reviving democracy” with citizens placed at the heart of governance. The Eminent Persons Group just appointed by Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma would do well to have an audit of what positive initiatives have been taken on “reviving democracy” within the Commonwealth since the report of 2002. They cannot be unaware of the criticisms that, for all the good “declarations” of Commonwealth Heads of Government Conferences, the Commonwealth has so often been slow in responding, with credibility, to cases of gross human rights violations and the mockery made of democratic governance by too many member governments. It is of significance that under then long-serving Secretary General Sir Shridath Ramphal, previous “eminent persons” and “high-level” consultative groups appointed by the Commonwealth Secretariat, were to offer wide-ranging recommendations on governance, economic developmentand security, some of which were to inspire initiatives also by the United Nations. For example, the historic United Nations Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS), hosted in Barbados in 1994. The Commonwealth Summit that took place in The Bahamas in October 1985 was to endorse the recommendations offered in the Consultative Group Report on Vulnerability – Small States In The Global Society. The leaders had then expressed deep concerns for avoiding unconstitutional, undemocratic developments such as what took place two years earlier in Grenada with a coup and subsequent military invasion by the United States. Therefore, we await the report from the just-appointed Eminent Persons Group, intended to be available in time for the next Commonwealth Summit scheduled for 2011 in Australia.
