GLOBAL NOTEBOOK
Aging Influence
POLITICS
The Commonwealth in the 21st Century
F
ew intergovernmental
organizations which exist
solely to further the values of
democracy, liberal equality, good
governance, and minority rights can
boast a membership of 53 countries
from every single continent, covering
a third of the world’s population in
almost entirely developing regions.
Seven additional states in the Middle
East, Africa and South America
that are often attacked by Western
human rights observers, including
Yemen, South Sudan and Algeria,
have expressed interest in joining
and committing themselves to these
values. And yet, the Commonwealth
of Nations is viewed by many as an
anachronism, and as utterly irrelevant
in the 21st century.
It is hard to dismiss the claim of
anachronism. Headed by Queen Elizabeth II, the Commonwealth formed
in 1949 as a relic of the crumbling
British Empire. A number of nations,
most recently The Gambia in October
staff writer
JAMES WATKINS
2013, terminated membership citing
the fact that the organization was
merely a remnant of these nations’
colonial past—an unhealthy reminder
of a past that most (but not all) of the
Commonwealth nations share. On a
historical level, this is factually unavoidable: the fact that South Africa,
India, and Jamaica are member states
of an organization led by the Queen
of England seems hardly justifiable in
a postcolonial world.
Not only is the Commonwealth
a relic of the past, but according to a
realist analysis of international relations, it should also be a powerless,
meaningless entity. Member nations
have no legal obligations to each other
beyond a shared commitment to liberal
democratic values, in writing at least.
The most powerful weapon of enforcement in the Commonwealth arsenal
is to suspend a nation’s membership.
However, few other organizations are prepared to throw a member
state out of its community for poor
Queen Elizabeth II, the constitutional monarch of sixteen realms of the 53-member
Commonwealth of Nations, gazes out from her horse-drawn carriage as she leaves
Buckingham Palace.
6
H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W • Summer 2014
governance: the UN and the EU have
never fully suspended a member state,
while the African Union and the Arab
League both have both suspended nations during constitutional upheaval
or coups d’état but never explicitly for
a lack of compliance with their values.
This sanction has been imposed by
the Commonwealth against Nigeria in
1995, Pakistan in 1999 and 2007, Fiji in
2000 and 2006, and Zimbabwe in 2002.
Whilst Zimbabwe later voluntarily
withdrew its membership and Fiji is
still suspended, Nigeria and Pakistan
remain active members of the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth not only
lacks any legal power of enforcement
to ensure members maintain the values
that supposedly unite this geographically, economically, and socially disparate group, but it is also too often
criticized for not doing even the little
that it can. In November 2013, the
biennial Commonwealth Heads of
Government Meeting (CHOGM) was
held in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It was
chaired by President Mahinda Rajapaska, who the UN High Commissioner
recommended to be investigated by
the International Criminal Court for
war crimes and human rights violations
during the country’s long civil war with
Tamil separatists. All but three heads
of government, from Canada, India,
and Mauritius, denied calls to boycott
or relocate the summit.
And yet, though both anachronistic and evidently lacking power
to enforce its values, the Commonwealth remains. The organization
does have genuine influence across
the globe by providing unique economic and political assistance to nascent democracies, many of which are
often left out of the mainstream discourse of international affairs (25 of
the 54 Commonwealth countries are
classified by the UN as Small Island
Developing States). Commonwealth
representatives led international pressure to end apartheid in South Africa,
established an independent electoral
commission in Cameroon, drafted
the new constitution in Swaziland,
and helped to set up peaceful elections in Guyana.