HARARE: The Commonwealth beads of government Sunday issued a Harare declaration setting out pronoun of democracy, human nights, rule of Jaw and free market economy as lop prone for member-counties in 1990s and beyond with India succeeding in delinking these conditions to grant of foreign aid.
To be known as the “Harare commonwealth declaration™, it recognized racial prejudice and intolerance as “a dangerous sickness” and a threat to healthy development.
The heads of government authorized the commonwealth secretary general chief Emeka Anyaoku to visit South Africa at the earliest to find out how the commonwealth could help reinvigorate the process of negotiations leading w the establishment of a non-racial democratic government.
The four-page declaration emphasized that totalitarianism was giving way to democracy and justice in many parts of the world.
Decolonization was largely complete. Significant changes were al last under way in South Africa. These changes present the world and the commonwealth with the new tasks and challenges, said the declaration which will take the 50-nation club into the next century.
India, Malaysia and host Zimbabwe forced Britain and Canada to give up their move to link the question of foreign aid to 2 particular country’s track record in human rights and democratic functioning.
The declaration laid emphasis on these issues but set no mechanism to monitor their application. Many of the Asian and African members of the commonwealth are dictatorships or one-party democracies. India thus succeeded in keeping the emphasis of the commonwealth’s programs on development while at the same time supporting the question of human rights and strengthening of democratic institutions in the world.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 25, 1991
