Commonwealth Secretariat

The Secretariat is based in London and its strategic plan and work programme is guided by mandates that come from the CHOGM. A Board of Governors composed of representatives from all member states governs the Secretariat. The Board is further assisted by an Executive Committee made up of the eight largest donor states plus two states from each region of the Commonwealth. The Head of the Commonwealth Secretariat is the Secretary-General, the Rt Hon Don McKinnon.

The Secretariat is composed of a number of divisions and units. For human rights advocates, the most relevant ones are the Human Rights Unit (HRU), the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Division (LCAD) and the Political Affairs Division (PAD).

There have, however, been efforts made to mainstream human rights across the Secretariat and so other divisions also deal with human rights issues. The Gender Programme, for instance, promotes gender integration in the Secretariat's work and promotes women's rights as human rights. Gender concerns are also incorporated into the Secretariat's debt management programme and the work of the Commonwealth Youth Programme. The Commonwealth Youth Programme also includes other human rights issues in its work, including a diploma for youth workers.

The Deepening Democracy programme is designed to implement parts of the Harare Declaration. Most of the activities within this programme - such as workshops on the Role of the Opposition, Domestic Election Observers, and Accountability, Scrutiny and Oversight - have focused on formal democratic processes, rather than broader concepts of democracy. While the Commonwealth's definition of democracy includes not just the formal government structures and procedures, but also informal participants like civil society, in reality it is the structures such as the judiciary and the public sector which have been the focus of assistance rather than civil society.

The Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation is the Secretariat's main way to promote development and the alleviation of poverty in member countries, through the provision of technical assistance from one member country to another. This includes human rights training and advancing democracy in Commonwealth countries by providing specialist advisory services, training, experts and consultants to strengthen democratic institutions.

Human rights advocates can contact the divisions of the Secretariat to discuss their work. A good point of contact is the Civil Society Liaison Manager: d.kalete@commonwealth.int

More information on the Commonwealth Secretariat can be found here.