Influencing Commonwealth policy on human rights: the case of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative
Richard Bourne
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Abstract
The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) originated in two meetings in London in 1987, at the then Commonwealth Institute, Kensington,1 following a conference at Cumberland Lodge focusing on the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. The context was the disputatious Nassau summit (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, or CHOGM) of 1985, when other governments pressed the Thatcher government to introduce UK sanctions against apartheid South Africa; the failed "Eminent Persons" mediation mission to South Africa authorised by that CHOGM; and the widespread boycott of the Commonwealth Games, Edinburgh in 1986, in protest at UK policy on South Africa. Commonwealth non-governmental organisations based in the UK believed that, if the Commonwealth was right to press South Africa to end apartheid, the Commonwealth itself had to do more to promote human rights in its existing membership. The model of an "Eminent Persons Group" to survey the human rights scene in the Commonwealth was attractive. An ad hoc coalition of Commonwealth NGOs -the Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA), the Commonwealth Lawyers Association (CLA) and the Commonwealth Trade Union Council (CTUC) - came together to press this case. At the Vancouver CHOGM in that year these three called for an official Commonwealth initiative. When the CHOGM failed to react, these three recruited two more organisations - the Commonwealth Medical Association (CMA), and the Commonwealth Legal Education Association (CLEA) which demanded clarifications before joining - and subsequently established their own advisory group chaired by Flora MacDonald, former Foreign Minister of Canada, and appointed a Director. The MacDonald group started work in 1989, with a view to reporting to the 1991 Harare CHOGM, and the CHRI obtained charity registration in the UK in 1990.