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Volume 12 Number 2
New Delhi, Summer 2005
Newsletter   

Small Change Needed - What the Secretariat is
Costing the Commonwealth

Richard Bourne
Head, Commonwealth Policy Unit (CPSU)

The Commonwealth Secretariat, the key international agency which serves all 53 member states, turned forty on 25 June 2005. However, much as the cause is for celebration, its clear that the Secretariat is stuck in a time warp. High time that the finances and the structure of the Commonwealth Secretariat were overhauled, before it completely reduced in real value, resulting in adverse consequences for the work it could do and the values it is meant to represent.

Neither of the two recent reviews of the Commonwealth under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed of Malaysia in 1989-91 or under President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa in 1999-2001 have dared to tackle this. The present structure seems to have been put in place in the mid-sixties, in a pale reflection of the system which paid for the United Nations.

Problems galore…

  • The subscriptions now bear little relation to the growth, or ability to pay, of different member countries. Specifically they distinguish between“developed” and “developing” countries in a way that cannot be justified.
  • Four countries - the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zeland pay nearly 61 per cent of the budget between them, which means that they can often negate proposals which might be attractive to other members.
  • The subscriptions have not kept pace with the changing costs of an international body, so that staffing has dropped from around 420 in 1990 to around 280 in 2005. The total budget in 2003/4 was only £11.4 million.
  • Arrivals such as that of South Africa or departures like Zimbabwe tend to be dealt with in an ad hoc fashion when it comes to the Secretariat subscriptions; these have failed to take into proper account the fact that there has been a net increase of four members in the past 15 years.
  • Membership of the Commonwealth is supposed to equate to that of the payment of subscriptions to all inter-governmental bodies, but fails to do so. South Africa and Bangladesh are among the governments which have chosen not to join the Commonwealth Foundation that supports civil society, arts and professional links and Australia last year also pulled out of the Commonwealth of Learning, the distance teaching service.

Why it matters

The Secretariat hangs on to a definition of a “developed” state which ignores the analysis of the World Development Report which found in 2004, that 13 of the 53 member states were rated as having “high” human and economic development. The implication is that no developing state will ever stop being “developing,” and some would say that the idea that only largely white states are “developed” is grossly racist.

 

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CHRI Newsletter, Summer 2005


Editors: Vaishali Mishra & Clare Doube, CHRI;
Design: Print: Anshu Tejpal, Web Developer: Swayam Mohanty, CHRI.
Acknowledgement: Many thanks to all contributors

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The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) is an independent international NGO mandated to ensure the practical realisation of human rights in the Commonwealth.