Commonwealth summit told it faces ‘failure’ if rights reforms not adopted

Commonwealth leaders are being flatly warned that their 2011 summit will be “a failure” if it can’t find consensus on meaningful reforms.

The message came as representatives of the 54 member countries were locked in a retreat Saturday to debate controversial recommendations on enforcing human rights and the rule of law.

Malaysia’s former prime minister said it was “imperative” that a massive reform report he helped write be accepted at the summit, along with a speedy timeline for implementation.

The biennial Commonwealth leaders’ meeting, known as CHOGM, commissioned the study in 2009 but now finds itself divided by the hard-hitting outcome.

An appointed 11-member panel, chaired by former Malaysian leader Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and including a former Australian high court judge, a former British foreign minister and Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, made 106 recommendations, including 14 priority recommendations.

The study, which officially remains under wraps but has been widely leaked, baldly asserts that possibly terminal decay has set into the Commonwealth due to its silence about abuses, including forced marriages, laws against homosexuality and political repression.

Among other things, the report calls for a commissioner of human rights to investigate abuses and the repeal of anti-gay laws that still exist in 41 Commonwealth nations.

“If this CHOGM does not deliver such reforms, it is our duty to sound the caution to you that this CHOGM will be remembered not as the triumph it should be, but as a failure,” Badawi said at a news conference Saturday morning.

Canadian officials and others, however, are already making it clear the priority recommendations will not all be adopted here in Perth.

The leaders wouldn’t even agree to publicly release the critical report — a decision that British panellist Sir Malcolm Rifkind called “a disgrace” on Saturday.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his British counterpart David Cameron are both leaving the Commonwealth conference earlier than anticipated, using the excuse of this week’s crucial G20 economic summit in France.

Harper’s spokesman Andrew MacDougall said that while acceptance of all the reforms won’t occur here, Canada expects a follow-up process to be put in place to keep alive the recommendations on issues of rights, democracy and rule of law.

“If they were punted with no follow-up process, that would be a loss,” said MacDougall. However Canada expects to see a nine-month timeline to revisit the report, so “it’s not an indefinite punt,” he added.

Panel members don’t see it that way.

Sir Ronald Sanders, who represents small Commonwealth states on the report team, likened any such move as having the recommendations “kicked into the high grass.”

India’s foreign secretary, Ranjan Mathai, was quoted by Indian media as saying his county opposes a Commonwealth human rights commissioner, because it would be a costly duplication of work already being done by the United Nations.

Mathai said there was a “lively debate” over the panel report’s recommendations, and diplomatically suggested that the notion of a rights commissioner needs “further examination and clarification in many areas.”

Before Saturday’s day-long retreat began, Harper joined Cameron, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the leaders of Pakistan and Nigeria at a morning news conference to announce increased aid for a decade-old global polio eradication program.

Canada pledged another $15 million over the next two years toward that goal, adding to the $348 million it has spent since 2000.

“Doing nothing is really inexcusable,” said Harper. “Now is the time for the final push.”

Three of the four countries where the crippling and deadly disease is still endemic — Indian, Pakistan and Nigeria — are Commonwealth members.