| Danial Norjidi |
TRADE, climate change, security and Commonwealth values will be among the topics to be discussed when the 2018 Commonwealth Summit takes place in the United Kingdom in April next year.
Tim Hitchens, Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth Summit 2018, shared this while speaking to the Bulletin following a visit to Brunei Darussalam on Wednesday.
Leaders from more than 50 countries are expected to attend next year’s summit, which will be held on the week beginning April 16, 2018 in London and Windsor. The summit will see the UK take over as chair of the Commonwealth until 2020, and Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle being among the summit venues for the first time.
“In April next year we will be having a week of meetings in London. These are meetings with Commonwealth leaders which happen every two years. They are known as the Commonwealth Summit, and we will be getting about 10,000 people coming to town. We’ll have 50 heads of states, 50 foreign ministers, and a thousand journalists – it’s a big, big event,” said Hitchens.
He added that they will also be looking at what the Commonwealth has achieved in the 20th Century, and also what it will mean in the 21st Century and what lies in store for it.
“Because of that, we’re doing a lot of talking to young people around the Commonwealth about what they want the Commonwealth to represent in the 21st Century,” the CEO said.
“And so, part of my aim in this trip around Southeast Asia, travelling to Kuala Lumpur, and here to Bandar Seri Begawan, and tonight and tomorrow to Singapore, is to talk to people, particularly the young people, about what they want the Commonwealth to stand for in the 21st Century.”
On the significance of the summit to Brunei, he said: “It’s an opportunity for Brunei to showcase itself, to showcase its values, and to showcase the place of Southeast Asia in the world.”
Asked on what he hopes to see achieved through the summit, he said, “We have, first of all, set a number of specific challenges that all 52 of us are facing in the Commonwealth.
“The first of those is that the forces of protectionism in international trade are rising, and how can we as countries which have relied on free trade, how can we increase trade between each other? At the moment total trade between all of us in the Commonwealth is $800 billion. How do we get it up to $1 trillion? That’s the first challenge we set.
“Second is climate change,” he said, noting the Paris Agreement. “We all agreed to Paris two years ago, but actually five of us have still not ratified Paris, so how do we actually persuade everyone in the Commonwealth to ratify Paris and make it real and help, particularly, the smaller, vulnerable countries and island states – those that are most susceptible to climate change challenges.
“The third challenge is around the new specific security threats we face in the 21st Century, and of these, I’d particularly pick out cyber security and countering violent extremism – both of which are issues currently being faced not just by the big mature economies, but all of us.
“The last one is just focusing a bit on what Commonwealth values mean to us. It’s an intangible concept, but when I was in Malaysia yesterday talking to Malaysian business people, they were saying that they find it easier to do business with Commonwealth countries in Africa than non-Commonwealth countries in Africa.
“They explained that this is down to the language advantage, the legal understanding, and the sense of trust engendered by these common bonds. And so, it’s just looking at what those values are.
“Every time I talk to young people, they know what Commonwealth values are; there’s something to do with moderation, with tolerance, a bit of living with people who are different from you, and I think those are the values that we want to express and support through the summit”.
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