Conflict Management in the Commonwealth

Abstract

The successful transfer of political power in Zimbabwe and the Commonwealth Observer Mission for the Ugandan elections have rekindled interest in the Commonwealth as an institution for handling conflicts both within and between its members. This is not a new idea since it was part of the rhetoric and reality of the British Commonwealth. The idea was downgraded in the new Commonwealth but the pendulum is swinging back to envisage a conflict-handling role for both the Secretariat and the Heads of Government Meetings (CHOGMs). The Secretary-General has extolled the Commonwealth’s evolution of ‘… some rather special approaches to dialogue …’ and suggested that such innovations in techniques of conference management could be applied more widely in the search for solutions to global problems.¹