Forum
Warning to Govts
By Ferial Haffajee
COMMONWEALTH governments must
match principles more closely with practice if the body
is to have relevance in the twenty-first century, says
a final statement from the Commonwealth Peoples Forum
to be issued to heads of state who began jetting in
to Abuja yesterday.
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To ensure that it was more than a talk-shop, the Commonwealth
Secretariat should be given the power to check up on commitments
made by the top political bosses to the biannual Commonwealth
Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM). The Secretariat should
“be mandated to develop means of tracking and reporting
progress on implementation of such Commonwealth commitments,
consistent with the agreed values of good governance including
transparency and accountability”. In other words, the
NGOs and other elements of civil society want governments
to be subject to an independent report card.
In addition, civil society warned against human rights abuses
by governments and criticised the threat to freedom posed
by the war on terror. “In the global climate of threat
to peace and security, we ask governments to recognise that
there is a threat posed to good governance in the attempt
to curb terrorism which has resulted in the closing of space
for civil society activity,” said representatives of
civil society from 45 of the Commonwealth’s 53 member
states and who have met in Abuja since Monday. In addition,
they welcomed the “increasing global public demand for
a just and secure world”.
The NGO’s want the Commonwealth – the world’s
third largest organisation of world leaders – to kick-start
the failed Cancun world trade talks.
Unless the Commonwealth beefs up its ability to put policy
into practice, questions about its relevance would not go
away, said activists who met in a plenary all day yesterday
to present its Abuja declaration to the main Commonwealth
Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in the course of the three
day meeting.
The final statement is particularly strong on pushing for
better gender equality: it has called on member states to
adopt the optional protocol on the Convention for the Elimination
of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which asserts the
primacy of gender equality over traditional practice –
a protection which provided “human rights instruments
between the individual and the state”. In addition,
they called on the Commonwealth to focus on women’s
health by promoting female-controlled methods of avoiding
infections.
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