Democratizing the Commonwealth

International Affairs

Volumn 74, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 379-392

  Mayall, James ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0040350155     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2346.00023     Document Type: Review

References (29)

1. Report of the Commonwealth Secretary-General, 1997 (London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 1997), p. 1.
2. Speech by the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon. Tony Blair MP, at the opening ceremony, Edinburgh International Conference Centre, 24 October 1997.
3. For a definition of small states in the Commonwealth, see A future for small states: overcoming vulnerability (London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 1997), pp. 8-9.
4. Peter Lyon, 'Small states reconsidered' in Small statehood and the Commonwealth reconsidered', presented to delegates at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Edinburgh, 1997 (London: Carfax Publishing for The Round Table, 1997), pp. 9-14.
5. Report of the Secretary-General, p. 8.
6. The phrase was first used in the London declaration of 1949. The title 'Head of the Commonwealth' is not hereditary, 'but the presumption is that it will pass to the Queen's successors, as it passed to her on the death of George VI in 1952. The office, however, is purely symbolic. The Queen has no place in the republican constitutions of the Commonwealth; nor does she discharge any constitutional functions in virtue of headship':Vernon Bogdanor, 'Uniting disparate nations', The House Magazine, 20 October 1997, p. 22.
7. For text, see Adam Roberts and Benedict Kingsbury, eds, United Nations, divided world: the UN's role in international relations, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), appendix A, paras 17-19, pp. 474-5.
8. Ibid.
9. See James Mayall, ed., The new interventionism, 1991-1994: United Nations experience in Cambodia, former Yugoslavia and Somalia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 1-24
10. In 1996-7 the Secretary-General and/or the Secretariat were involved in resolving the constitutional crisis in Lesotho following the death of King Mosheshoe II; in facilitating agreement between the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the elected government in Sierra Leone; and in finding a solution to the constitutional crisis in Papua New Guinea, following the government's engagement of mercenaries in an attempt to end a separatist rebellion in the province of Bougainville.
11. Edinburgh communiqué, para. 22.
12. Ibid., para. 23.
13. When asked about Kashmir, the Secretary-General replied 'Kashmir has never been discussed at a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. The Commonwealth Heads of Government have a convention of not discussing issues of bilateral conflicts within the Commonwealth so the best I can hope is that the meeting will provide a further opportunity for Prime Ministers Gujural and Nawaz Sharif to continue the discussions which they have started': transcript of press conference by the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Edinburgh, 23 October 1997.
14. K. Srinivasan, 'A force for democracy, human rights and the rule of law? Do Harare and Millbrook go too far or not far enough?', The Round Table, no. 344, October 1997, pp. 513-16.
15. Ibid. p. 513.
16. 'The Millbrook Commonwealth Action Programme on the Harare Declaration'. For text see Report of the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Appendix 1, pp. 111-13.
17. 'The Millbrook Commonwealth Action Programme on the Harare Declaration'. For text see Report of the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Appendix 1, pp. 111-13.
18. Ibid., p. 3.
19. Chapter VI deals with the Pacific Settlement of Disputes.
20. K. Srinivasan, 'A force for democracy', p. 514.
21. The original membership consisted of the foreign ministers of Britain, Ghana, Malaysia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica and South Africa under the chairmansip of the Hon. Dr Stan Mudenge, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Zimbabwe.
22. See the letter from the minister of foreign affairs of Nigeria to the Commonwealth Secretary-General, 12 December 1995, and the statement by the chairman of CMAG at the conclusion of the group's mission to Nigeria, November 1996. Report of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group at the Harare Declaration (CMAG) to Commonwealth Heads of Government, Commonwealth Secretariat, September 1997, appendices IX, pp. 89-94, and XIII, pp. 109-10.
23. See the addendum to the CMAG report, 24 October 1997, ibid., p. xiv.
24. It was analogous, however, to the action taken by the OAS in refusing to accept the outcome of the coup that overthrew President Aristide of Haiti in 1991. See David Malone, Decision-making in the UN Security Council, 1990-96: the case of Haiti (Oxford: Oxford University, D.Phil., 1997).
25. Edinburgh comuniqué, para. 16.
26. Ibid., para. 14.
27. CMAG report, p. 40.
28. Ibid., p. 40.
29. Edinburgh Commonwealth Economic Declaration, para. 5.