Development
Global: Commonwealth Ministers meet - a real opportunity or more rhetoric
2007-10-03, Issue 322
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/43556
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Ahead of the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) this November, Maja Daruwala says that African heads need to lead on issues of concern to the Continent and not leave it to others to finger point.
The next two weeks will see London abuzz with various foreign ministers and permanent representatives from across the Commonwealth coming to deliberate on what gets into the communiqués of the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Meeting this November (CHOGM). The process of creating these communiqués is long drawn and organic. Issues bubble up from the earlier meetings of foreign, women's affairs, finance ministers and the like that take place in the two years between CHOGMs and also from the continuum of work developed from mandates given to the Commonwealth Secretariat by the Heads of State at earlier CHOGMS. Officials at the Commonwealth Secretariat gather together all these threads in draft paragraphs, which then get distilled by negotiations like the ones being held this week. Past mandates have included promoting and mainstreaming women's rights into the work of the Secretariat, helping ensure better election practices, raising awareness of HIV/AIDs, leading on debt forgiveness, getting reports back on progress on the Millennium Development Goals and assisting with constitution making. What the communiqués say decides future work at the Secretariat. A deal of this is concerned with providing technical assistance to countries that ask for it, raising awareness and too gently pushing unwilling governments to comply with membership obligations in the Fundamental Political Principles of the Commonwealth - founding documents which are very much based on being obedient to internationally agreed human rights standards. After governments have indicated their priorities and current concerns a consensus document goes to the Heads of State at their biennial meeting for finalisation. Secretariat officials whose full time job this is, countries that contribute the most to the Commonwealth's coffers, the host country - this time Uganda - and the more populous nations like India and Nigeria make the running. Since the Commonwealth is not on everyone's political front burner as the most influential of multilateral associations, many officials that go to its meetings are often not properly briefed and, but for a handful, civil society ignores its deliberations: perhaps with good cause. Unfulfilled promises enthusiastically made by Heads of Government lie scattered like the paper hats, torn streamers and used paper napkins after some annual lodge bash for the sad janitor to clear up into the dustbin without a trace till the next jolly occasion comes around. Nevertheless, the potential for taking real action still makes the Commonwealth's meetings a party worth attending in the hope that some, at least, of the promise will be realised. Last time around Mugabe's nervousness at being named and shamed for his terrible overlordship of 12 million of his countrymen forced him to pre-empt censure by pulling out of the association rather than face the discredit of being suspended. This time around, prior to the November meet General Musharraf, will be careful to doff his general's uniform as promised for something at least that looks like the fig leaf of democratic functioning - even if Fiji, Maldives and Bangladesh hang on to their coloured exercises in democratic governance. Because the Commonwealth works like a club of leaders acting through consensus it is in fact a very safe space for officials and governments to go beyond the posturing and really get to grips with the issues of the day. Barring a handful of very affluent countries the Commonwealth is essentially an association of grindingly poor countries where well over half the population of near 1.4 billion lives on less than $2 a day. These people need real solutions and not rhetoric. The people all know what's wrong. One of the big things that are wrong in most Commonwealth countries is policing. Every year very few nations from Antigua to Zambia - and all the other letters of the alphabet in between - escape the ignominy of being cited for abusive, violent, discriminatory and corrupt policing. Millions experience it everyday. They all know that most police forces need a total overhaul. Governments know how to do it: re-order policing; re-examine how it is actually done on the ground; make recruitment fair, training better, management result oriented, provide reasonable resources, and be strong in monitoring performance and punishing the guilty. This is one side of it, but the most important bit of the improvement project is to make police more accountable to law and less subservient, less obsequious to those momentarily in power and to create systems where the policy is laid down by government and operational responsibility for ensuring the safety and security of the population at large is in the hands of the police leadership. In other words, re-envision police establishments so that they run like essential services for the population much like a fire service or the post office and not like the coercive force of some foreign power. That old way of policing belongs to colonial times. It should not be the way our democratic governments use police. Keeping to those past values and systems is an admission of our inability to be free from the worst influences of that time and to shame ourselves as sovereign nations. Many excuses are put forward for stalling reforms of essential systems. The issue of lack of resources is always a favourite. Never mind the fact that the reform of management practice does not inevitably require or necessitate additional funding. There is, as well, a need to examine if present resources are really well spent and could not be more logically allocated to go further than present wasteful ways allow. Equally, it is more than probable that unreformed policing costs the State and its people much more through significantly impeding internal development, foreign investment and consequent prosperity.
In modern times, another crucial reason for looking at a new type of policing is the truth that unreformed policing has proved that it cannot prevent or reduce crime or calm fears about the threat from terrorism. Only policing that has the confidence of the people can do this. This is a singularly important building block for achieving good governance as well.
To help the process of moving from grandstanding to implementing workmanlike solutions to bring about good governance - a key Commonwealth concern - the Commonwealth could make a start this week by agreeing to bring together a group of experts to help it lay down a new vision of policing. The group could lay down what a new kind of policing should look like; what principles should guide this policing and how this can be brought about given that countries are struggling for capacity and resources. It could mandate the kind of future technical help the Commonwealth can provide its members so that the process of police reforms is well informed and hastened. There is very good practice on policing in the Commonwealth. Governments will not have to reinvent the wheel, but with a little help from their friends can tap into and adapt experiences of those that have gone some way toward making improvements. For instance, Nigeria has designed a very strong national police accountability mechanism. South Africa has an excellent method for evaluating police performance. The Australians and the UK are constantly struggling to defeat institutional racism and improve policing in multi-ethnic communities. New Zealand is involved in reviewing its police functioning. The experience of police reform in Northern Ireland is a lesson in creating confidence in minority groups after years of head to head conflict and the turn around of the Hong Kong police has lessons to offer on drastically reducing corruption. Pakistan's experiments in local control over local policing and, India's recent Supreme Court orders seeking to guide the reforms process, are all at the service of the Commonwealth's membership if it is willing to listen. Eighteen African nations of the Commonwealth will be represented in London this week. Later all will be at CHOGM. It seems a shame, if not down right unethical, for leaders of essentially poor countries to spend money on debating fine words rather than sincerely working toward designing workmanlike solutions to fundamental problems that are today blocking democratic and economic development. This summit is in Kampala. African heads need to lead on issues of concern to the Continent and not leave it to others to finger point. It's not always easy, but someone has to take a deep breath and take the first step. Otherwise, it is always going to be Big Brother pointing and looking askance at 'these nations' and, wondering, if anyone will ever get their act together. Commonwealth Ministers Meet - a Real Opportunity or More Rhetoric Maja Daruwala, Director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative The next two weeks will see London abuzz with various foreign ministers and permanent representatives from across the Commonwealth coming to deliberate on what gets into the communiqués of the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Meeting this November (CHOGM). The process of creating these communiqués is long drawn and organic. Issues bubble up from the earlier meetings of foreign, women's affairs, finance ministers and the like that take place in the two years between CHOGMs and also from the continuum of work developed from mandates given to the Commonwealth Secretariat by the Heads of State at earlier CHOGMS. Officials at the Commonwealth Secretariat gather together all these threads in draft paragraphs, which then get distilled by negotiations like the ones being held this week. Past mandates have included promoting and mainstreaming women's rights into the work of the Secretariat, helping ensure better election practices, raising awareness of HIV/AIDs, leading on debt forgiveness, getting reports back on progress on the Millennium Development Goals and assisting with constitution making. What the communiqués say decides future work at the Secretariat. A deal of this is concerned with providing technical assistance to countries that ask for it, raising awareness and too gently pushing unwilling governments to comply with membership obligations in the Fundamental Political Principles of the Commonwealth - founding documents which are very much based on being obedient to internationally agreed human rights standards. After governments have indicated their priorities and current concerns a consensus document goes to the Heads of State at their biennial meeting for finalisation. Secretariat officials whose full time job this is, countries that contribute the most to the Commonwealth's coffers, the host country - this time Uganda - and the more populous nations like India and Nigeria make the running. Since the Commonwealth is not on everyone's political front burner as the most influential of multilateral associations, many officials that go to its meetings are often not properly briefed and, but for a handful, civil society ignores its deliberations: perhaps with good cause. Unfulfilled promises enthusiastically made by Heads of Government lie scattered like the paper hats, torn streamers and used paper napkins after some annual lodge bash for the sad janitor to clear up into the dustbin without a trace till the next jolly occasion comes around. Nevertheless, the potential for taking real action still makes the Commonwealth's meetings a party worth attending in the hope that some, at least, of the promise will be realised. Last time around Mugabe's nervousness at being named and shamed for his terrible overlordship of 12 million of his countrymen forced him to pre-empt censure by pulling out of the association rather than face the discredit of being suspended. This time around, prior to the November meet General Musharraf, will be careful to doff his general's uniform as promised for something at least that looks like the fig leaf of democratic functioning - even if Fiji, Maldives and Bangladesh hang on to their coloured exercises in democratic governance. Because the Commonwealth works like a club of leaders acting through consensus it is in fact a very safe space for officials and governments to go beyond the posturing and really get to grips with the issues of the day. Barring a handful of very affluent countries the Commonwealth is essentially an association of grindingly poor countries where well over half the population of near 1.4 billion lives on less than $2 a day. These people need real solutions and not rhetoric. The people all know what's wrong. One of the big things that are wrong in most Commonwealth countries is policing. Every year very few nations from Antigua to Zambia - and all the other letters of the alphabet in between - escape the ignominy of being cited for abusive, violent, discriminatory and corrupt policing. Millions experience it everyday. They all know that most police forces need a total overhaul. Governments know how to do it: re-order policing; re-examine how it is actually done on the ground; make recruitment fair, training better, management result oriented, provide reasonable resources, and be strong in monitoring performance and punishing the guilty. This is one side of it, but the most important bit of the improvement project is to make police more accountable to law and less subservient, less obsequious to those momentarily in power and to create systems where the policy is laid down by government and operational responsibility for ensuring the safety and security of the population at large is in the hands of the police leadership. In other words, re-envision police establishments so that they run like essential services for the population much like a fire service or the post office and not like the coercive force of some foreign power. That old way of policing belongs to colonial times. It should not be the way our democratic governments use police. Keeping to those past values and systems is an admission of our inability to be free from the worst influences of that time and to shame ourselves as sovereign nations. Many excuses are put forward for stalling reforms of essential systems. The issue of lack of resources is always a favourite. Never mind the fact that the reform of management practice does not inevitably require or necessitate additional funding. There is, as well, a need to examine if present resources are really well spent and could not be more logically allocated to go further than present wasteful ways allow. Equally, it is more than probable that unreformed policing costs the State and its people much more through significantly impeding internal development, foreign investment and consequent prosperity.
In modern times, another crucial reason for looking at a new type of policing is the truth that unreformed policing has proved that it cannot prevent or reduce crime or calm fears about the threat from terrorism. Only policing that has the confidence of the people can do this. This is a singularly important building block for achieving good governance as well.
To help the process of moving from grandstanding to implementing workmanlike solutions to bring about good governance - a key Commonwealth concern - the Commonwealth could make a start this week by agreeing to bring together a group of experts to help it lay down a new vision of policing. The group could lay down what a new kind of policing should look like; what principles should guide this policing and how this can be brought about given that countries are struggling for capacity and resources. It could mandate the kind of future technical help the Commonwealth can provide its members so that the process of police reforms is well informed and hastened. There is very good practice on policing in the Commonwealth. Governments will not have to reinvent the wheel, but with a little help from their friends can tap into and adapt experiences of those that have gone some way toward making improvements. For instance, Nigeria has designed a very strong national police accountability mechanism. South Africa has an excellent method for evaluating police performance. The Australians and the UK are constantly struggling to defeat institutional racism and improve policing in multi-ethnic communities. New Zealand is involved in reviewing its police functioning. The experience of police reform in Northern Ireland is a lesson in creating confidence in minority groups after years of head to head conflict and the turn around of the Hong Kong police has lessons to offer on drastically reducing corruption. Pakistan's experiments in local control over local policing and, India's recent Supreme Court orders seeking to guide the reforms process, are all at the service of the Commonwealth's membership if it is willing to listen. Eighteen African nations of the Commonwealth will be represented in London this week. Later all will be at CHOGM. It seems a shame, if not down right unethical, for leaders of essentially poor countries to spend money on debating fine words rather than sincerely working toward designing workmanlike solutions to fundamental problems that are today blocking democratic and economic development. This summit is in Kampala. African heads need to lead on issues of concern to the Continent and not leave it to others to finger point. It's not always easy, but someone has to take a deep breath and take the first step. Otherwise, it is always going to be Big Brother pointing and looking askance at 'these nations' and, wondering, if anyone will ever get their act together.
Maja Daruwala is the Director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative