The post-lockdown Commonwealth reunion: W. David McIntyre reviews Chogm 2022 held in Kigali, Rwanda in June.

• Author: McIntyre, W. David

A little-noticed landmark in the revival of in-person diplomacy took place during the weekend of 24-25 June 2022. The 26th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) took place in Kigali, Rwanda. Squeezed as it was between her visits to the United Nations, President Biden and Harvard, and NATO, the European Commission, Australia and Pacific Islands Forum, Jacinda Ardern did not attend. Nor did the prime ministers of another four of the key Commonwealth members, Australia, South Africa, India and Pakistan. Otherwise, there was a good turnout--50 out of the 54 members. Absentees were St Kitts, Grenada, Nauru and Kiribati, and of the 50, only 30 were heads of government. New Zealand was represented by Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta.

The Chogm was preceded by a week of preliminary meetings--the Youth, Women's, People's and Business Forums; side events on urgent issues; and pre-Chogm ministerial meetings. The leaders, when they met, agreed to admit the Republics of Togo and Gabon as new members, thus taking the African majority to nineteen as compared with twelve from the Caribbean, eleven from the Pacific, ten from Asia+Indian Ocean and four from Europe+Canada.

Preliminary reservations.

In the run up to Kigali there were serious questions as to the suitability of Rwanda as the venue. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, and 24 other organisations, questioned Rwanda's suitability as the venue because of its human rights record and allegations about denial of media freedom. It was feared that confirmation of a full second term for Baroness Scotland as secretary-general would be divisive. In April 2022, the Jamaican foreign minister, Kamina Johnson Smith, was nominated and was said to have support from Britain and India. The name of a former governor-general of Tuvalu was also bruited with the purpose of highlighting the climate change issue.

The most serious criticism was that the Commonwealth was punching below its weight. Although member states make up 30 per cent of the world's population, the Commonwealth's purposes and activities were largely unknown, and contemporary issues, like sexuality and LGBTQ problems, human trafficking and modern slavery were neglected. It was argued that greater efforts were needed to get through to the 60 per cent of Commonwealth peoples under the age of 30 and that measures for assessing the effectiveness of Commonwealth programmes should be devised.

There were fears that differences of response to the Russian military incursion in the Ukraine would surface in Kigali. While old-Commonwealth members Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand gave support to Ukraine, eleven African and Asian member states, including India, abstained (or absented themselves) from UN condemnation of Russia. Another source of possible division was the British government's recent new policy of sending illegal refugee applicants to Rwanda.

The venue

When he welcomed delegates to the conference, President Paul Kagame said Rwanda was 'a new member with no historical connection to the British Empire'. While this was true in that it was never a British dependency, it did have many connections with the Empire. It was on the route of the proposed Cape to Cairo railway. The pre-colonial kingdoms of the region between Lakes Kivu and Victoria straggled what later became the modern borders with Uganda and Tanzania. While it became part of German East Africa between 1885 and 1916, it was wrested from Germany by Belgium in the First World War, with help from the British and South African armies.

Belgian rule of Rwanda from 1922 was as a mandate under the League of Nations, then a trust territory under the United Nations, until independence in 1962. Recollection of the post-decolonisation years is dominated by civil war, the genocide of 1994 and exile for many in Uganda. As part of reconciliation and the rebuilding of the country, it adopted the English language (along with Kinyarwanda and Swahili) for international trading purposes, and it applied for membership of the Commonwealth while remaining a member of La Francophonie. Commonwealth membership was agreed at the Trinidad Chogm in 2009.

At Malta in 2015 it was agreed that Malaysia would be the venue for the next-but-one Chogm in 2019, but as the London Chogm was delayed until 2018, this arrangement fell...