Commonwealth should unite on human rights

LAST weekend, representatives of 54 countries, mostly heads of government, attended the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

High on the agenda was a report by the Eminent Persons Group, established to reinvigorate the Commonwealth, strengthen its secretariat and transform its approach to human rights.

The group included former Australian High Court justice Michael Kirby, former British foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind, former Malaysian prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Mozambique's former first lady (and wife of Nelson Mandela) Graca Machel, among others.

The group's recommendations were unanimous. But the assembled leaders ignored its key recommendation, which concerned the establishment of a human rights commissioner to oversee and report on the actions of member governments. The human-rights performance of Commonwealth countries, developed and developing, needs improvement in many areas.

Unfortunately, some African governments regarded the report as targeting developing countries, though the recommendations would have been just as relevant to certain developed countries which, especially since the terrorist attacks of 2001, have violated basic human rights protections.

The record of the Commonwealth countries in regard to ethnic minorities also can be substantially improved. In too many countries, minorities, especially indigenous groups, are treated heavy-handedly. Similarly, as refugee flows have altered direction during the past 15 or 20 years, treatment of refugees - enshrined since 1951 in the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees - needs to be re-examined.

Many Commonwealth countries live on the edge of these problems. Some have large refugee camps within their borders. Others receive families fleeing persecution and terror in their own countries. More light needs to be shed on this problem.

The standards enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights need reinvigorating. In too many countries, there is an incipient reversion to racism.

The second important issue for the meeting concerned the civil war in Sri Lanka and whether the government and the Tamils had committed war crimes in the conflict's final years. The question was virtually ignored. A UN Human Rights Commission report suggests substantial evidence of war crimes by the government and the Tamil Tigers, especially in the final two to three years of the conflict. A separate independent report by the International Crisis Group came to much the same conclusion. Indeed, there is sufficient evidence to justify an international inquiry into the actions of both sides, potentially leading to indictments before the International Criminal Court.

But the Commonwealth leaders suggested the matter should be managed bilaterally, rather than by the organisation as a whole.

This failure to debate what happened in Sri Lanka may have consequences for the Commonwealth down the line. Indeed, several weeks ago Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke strongly against the lack of action in Sri Lanka, and indicated that if the next Commonwealth meeting were held there, as planned, he would not attend. He may not be the only leader to take such a stand when the time comes.

Human rights should be a matter on which the Commonwealth stands united, with determination. It should be at the forefront of the struggle to promote accountability for violations whenever and wherever they occur. That opportunity has been lost.

The advancement of human rights has taken many different forms. For example, Michael Boyce, chief of the defence staff of the British armed services at the start of the Iraq war, told then prime minister Tony Blair he would not order troops to invade unless he was assured unequivocally the war was legal under British and international law. Unfortunately, the British government's response was deficient and did not constitute a valid legal opinion.

The Commonwealth has taken substantive action in the past, especially in relation to apartheid-era South Africa. Most members of the Commonwealth have signed on to the ICC, perhaps the most important institutional change in the international legal architecture since the establishment of the UN.

The Commonwealth's people deserve much better than their leaders delivered at the Australia summit. If the Commonwealth is to become the vital international body that its national leaders wish it to be, it needs more coherent and effective leadership, as envisaged by the EPG's report.

It needs a human rights commissioner. But most of all it needs national leaders who are prepared to act on the basis of conviction rather than shirking their responsibilities when divisive issues arise.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011

Malcolm Fraser was prime minister from 1975 to 1983.