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COMMONWEALTH: Another Month, Another Island

Analysis by Sanjay Suri

VALLETTA, Malta, Nov 23 2005 (IPS) - The Commonwealth heads of government meeting taking place in Malta from Friday this week could turn out to be the most definite indication yet that little can be expected at the world trade ministers meeting in Hong Kong next month.

The two are linked. For one, Commonwealth secretary-general Don McKinnon has long made fair trade a mission of the Commonwealth. Second, given its composition, if members cannot find agreement here, then agreement at the World Trade Organisation conference in Hong Kong can be ruled out.

What happens on that Asian island in December can be gauged from what happens on this European one in November.

“The Commonwealth heads of government meeting is not officially a forum for a discussion on trade, but the Commonwealth secretary-general and the Maltese prime minister have said that the relationship between trade and poverty will be high on the agenda,” Salil Shetty, director of the Millennium Campaign, an international anti-poverty coalition, told IPS.

The summit is particularly significant because “it is happening in a European Union country, and because British Prime Minister Tony Blair who holds presidency of the EU, will be attending,” Shetty said.

“If world leaders agreed in New York in September to promote the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), how can leaders then block it now,” he said. The Commonwealth meeting makes it “timely that pressure is applied from the poorer member countries.”

The MDGs were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2000 to dramatically reduce poverty and hunger, promote infant and maternal health, and fight diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria, among other goals, by 2015.

The Commonwealth is a group of 53 nations that were once a part of the British empire, and which includes Britain. The other developed countries among its members are Australia, New Zealand and Canada. So distinct are these from the rest that they have come to be known as a sub-group within the Commonwealth – the ‘ABC’ countries.

The Commonwealth includes some of the emerging new economies – India, South Africa, Malaysia – and some of the poorest countries in the world, including many small island states in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

But they share a common past by way of British colonisation and influences. That past has left a common hangover that the Commonwealth seeks to sustain, and build upon: the English language, democratic institutions, a strong legal system.

That makes the Commonwealth a microcosm of the world – and not such a small microcosm either because the population of the Commonwealth countries is close to two billion. That large club will be looking for some commonality on a trade deal ahead of the Hong Kong meeting.

But Britain and Canada are members of the G8, the group of leading industrialised nations (the others are the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia). Britain and host Malta (a tiny island country in the Mediterranean with a population of 400,000) are members of the European Union (EU).

Few believe that these countries will place their interest in the Commonwealth above that of the EU or G8.

Take host Malta, which is pushing for a hawkish EU position that would tie development aid to commitments by poor countries to control migration. The poor countries from which migrants come include several Commonwealth countries in Asia and Africa.

And while Britain is far less insistent on agricultural subsidies than France, nobody even asks the question whether Britain would ditch the EU to adopt a Commonwealth position that its poorer members would be happy with.

That the Commonwealth bosses themselves are not very optimistic became clear Wednesday, when McKinnon was asked what the Commonwealth could do concretely to help the poor among its members.

“Do you mean how can this summit solve the world’s problems?” McKinnon replied. He clearly did not believe it could solve the problems of the world, or even those of the Commonwealth world.

The Commonwealth was not looking for “big bang” solutions, he said. “The conference will discuss which objectives and programmes within the Commonwealth could be targeted to reach our overall aims of networking.”

The leaders are all in agreement “at the headline level,” Shetty said. It is specific action that is falling short.

The agenda of the meeting itself is a perhaps new acknowledgement of the Commonwealth’s limitations. The heads of government used to be a five day-affair; for this conference that has been cut to three days over the coming weekend. Leaders will spend most of that time at one of Malta’s most expensive new tourist resorts.

But officials insist this will be no weekend break; the leaders will talk extensively, almost without aides, to agree a conference statement. That statement cannot leave trade out; the success of the summit – as with the one next month – will depend on what gets agreed, and what does not.

The little that should be expected is indicated also by the absence of several leaders. Among the significant absentees will be the prime minister of India, which is by far the biggest member of the Commonwealth.

The kind of statements the Commonwealth is known to produce – that “lead nowhere” – are being heard already. “Globalisation is challenging all countries,” Maltese Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said at a press meet Wednesday. “The Commonwealth, with its diversity, is an excellent locus to transform these challenges into opportunity.”

Poverty is the root problem, he said. “Once that is properly tackled, we can hopefully see all the Commonwealth develop further.” He said nothing about dropping import tariffs or subsidies that fuel poverty, or about more development aid or debt cancellation.

What speaks louder is what is not getting said.