| Danial Norjidi |
THE Commonwealth is significant as an advocate for peace, community and young people as well as creating a rules-based system, and its strength lies in its flexibility and ability to respond to different countries’ needs.
Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland said this during an interview with the Bulletin on August 6.
She noted that the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in London in April, saw 53 leaders agreeing on a whole agenda in the communique, and she described it as a historically extraordinary moment.
On the role of the Commonwealth in today’s world, she said, “I think it has a big role to play as an advocate for peace, community, particularly for young people, as 60 per cent of the Commonwealth is under the age of 30.”
“It has a role to play on creating a rules-based system, because it’s still multi-lateral in the way that we do business with each other. It’s not simply a bilateral nationalistic approach,” she added.
“Its strength lies in the fact that it’s flexible and can respond to the needs of different countries, but from the Secretariat’s point of view, we have also been described by a number of our countries as their bad weather friend. We are there to help with technical assistance, and the Commonwealth historically has always walked with people.”
The secretary-general also highlighted, “I think young people are extraordinarily important, and the interconnectivity that’s developing between our Commonwealth young people is really something we should celebrate, nurture and support, because if our Commonwealth is to have longevity, then we really have to build that platform for young people.
“We have a huge bulge right now in which we must invest, because that’s where our real wealth is. I think our young people are our real gold, so I believe we should invest in them.”
The secretary-general also spoke on the new Commonwealth website,www.thecommonwealth.org, which she said contains “not just the news but all our work in real time”.
“We’ve literally created a lake of data. Many countries have said that they have difficulties accessing data so if you go on that website, you’ll see everything we are doing in economic and social development, governance, peace, trade and oceans there.”
Touching on the Commonwealth Innovation Hub, she said, “We’ve created this new innovation hub in which we’re pooling the innovations coming from all 53 countries so that we can share them.
“We’re going to create a ‘Commonwealth Innovation Awards’. We have come together with the Commonwealth Innovation Fund, joining with the Global Innovation Fund, and they’re going to create a fund of £25 million to create incubators for innovators.
“If you go on our site, you’ll see that we’ve got a country space, where every country in the Commonwealth can highlight all the innovations they want the rest of the world to know about.
“We also have a databank of all the open source data that can be used to create the empirical evidence to develop policies. This is an opportunity to bring available data for 53 countries in one place, and allow people to look at what the other countries have already produced, so you don’t have to try and reinvent the wheel.
“We’ll also be trying to share our mistakes, because if you can learn from other people’s mistakes, then you don’t have to repeat them yourself,” she said.
“So we believe this innovation, sharing of data, community of knowledge and lake of information is extremely important,” she added.
The secretary-general recently made her first official visit to Brunei Darussalam as part of an 11-day tour to three Commonwealth countries.