Reform Starts Bottom‐Up. Can Civil Society Get The Commonwealth Back On Track?
| Author | Timothy M. Shaw,Francis Baert |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12257 |
| Published date | 01 September 2015 |
| Date | 01 September 2015 |
Reform Starts Bottom-Up. Can Civil Society
Get The Commonwealth Back On Track?
Francis Baert
UNU-CRIS and Ghent University
Timothy M. Shaw
UMass Boston and UNU-CRIS
In November 2015 leaders of the 53 member states of
the Commonwealth will gather in Valletta for the biennial
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).
The previous meeting in Colombo was overshadowed by
controversies about the lamentable human rights record
of host nation Sri Lanka, which resulted in the absence
of many important heads of state, and a concluding
communiqu
e that could not expunge the diplomatic
fiasco. Since then, the Commonwealth is fighting for sur-
vival –and not for the first time. The Commonwealth
has been in crisis for many years. Is it a relic of the past
or a unique international organisation which can bring
added value to the global stage? The worst we can do, is
ignore this bad state and pretend all is fine.
To understand this organisation, it is important to indi-
cate that the Commonwealth is a very small organisation
that appears in different disguises. We can identify three
different faces. The ‘official Commonwealth’is an
intergovernmental organisation of 53 states covering
one-third of the world’s population, but only a handful
member states really care. These countries have dele-
gated a degree of authority to three agencies that jointly
form ‘the Commonwealth bureaucracy’. Compared to
many other international organisations its size and bud-
get is very small. With fewer than 300 staff members, it
is comparable in size to the United Nations canteen. But
still, it tries to tackle more than a dozen policy domains
as diverse as human rights, trade or climate change. By
contrast, no fewer than 80 accredited associations and
civil society organisations make up ‘the People’s Com-
monwealth’. Some of which have seen their best days
years ago. The relationship between the bureaucracy and
civil society have become tense in recent years due to
funding and accreditation issues. Together, they form the
‘Commonwealth family’where power is diffuse and all
three components need each other badly.
Is the whole still greater than the sum of its parts? In
the absence of great performance or willingness for
change from the member states or the bureaucracy,
should we not look for reform bottom-up? With this in
mind, it is worth asking: Can civil society play a special
role in any process of Commonwealth rejuvenation? This
is no vision from the ivory tower, but a view from the
ground, as one of us has been an advocate of the Com-
monwealth for the last 40 years, including active involve-
ment in the People’s Commonwealth.
1
Mutual engagement as an event
We strongly believe that to achieve meaningful change
in an organisation, change should be seen as a process,
and not as a single event. Unfortunately, the Common-
wealth has a bad track-record on organisational reform.
The latest round of reform proposals were contained in
A Commonwealth of the People: Time for Urgent Reform
(Commonwealth Secretariat, 2011). This report consisted
of no fewer than 106 recommendations. Although
thoughtful and timely, as with most other reform propos-
als within a multilateral setting, reform is not a process
of negotiation that results in a take-it-or-leave-it docu-
ment. This is because by presenting change in this way
it becomes just one event in a line of others, which can
be ignored. If it does not work, then write a new report.
On top of that, all energy got wasted on the acceptance
of a tepid Commonwealth Charter (Baert and Shaw,
2014). While the report refers to ‘A Commonwealth of
the People’, for us, any process of change can only ensue
from the wider network of organisations, the People’s
Commonwealth.
We would like to focus on the part of the reform pack-
age that was neglected, namely, civil society; not only
because member states and bureaucracy are currently
underperforming, but also because civil society is the clos-
est and most tangible connection people have with the
Commonwealth. In its current set-up, it is also the oldest
component. The People’s Commonwealth consists of a
wide variety of civil society organisations, networks and
associations. Some of the larger of these organisations
Global Policy (2015) 6:3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12257 ©2015 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 6 . Issue 3 . September 2015 325
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