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Governance Area: Influencing public discourse

Commonwealth insights: inclusive governance series

These papers draw on discussions had at the Commonwealth People’s Forum 2018 and share the strategies employed by civil society across the Commonwealth to achieve specific policy goals.

Topics include legislative reform, re-imagining migration, and inclusion of persons with disabilities.

The Commonwealth Foundation encourages the use, translation, adaptation and copying of this material for non-commercial use. We only ask that appropriate credit be given to the Commonwealth Foundation.

Commonwealth People’s Forum 2018

The Commonwealth People’s Forum (CPF) is a biennial event held prior to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. CPF 2018 took place on 16-18 April in London and was jointly organised by the Government of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth Foundation. CPF 2018 critically explored policy based actions under the theme of ‘Inclusive Governance: The Challenge for a Contemporary Commonwealth’. It provided an innovative opportunity for civil society organisations to share knowledge and learn from each other as well as to interact with governance institutions on key policy issues. The CPF 2018 series elaborates on the issues covered in the London Declaration on Inclusive Governance for a Renewed Commonwealth.

Download CPF 2018 London declaration and call to action Download Commonwealth insights: universal health coverage Download Commonwealth insights: legislative reform Download Commonwealth insights: inclusion of persons with disabilities Download Commonwealth insights: reimagining migration Download Commonwealth insights: climate justice Download Commonwealth insights: women negotiating peace Download Commonwealth insights: inclusive governance

Rewriting the script

Posted on by Commonwealth Foundation

Photo credit: Russell Watson. 

The Commonwealth Foundation (CF) spoke to Lisa Harewood, a Bajan filmmaker, during the Commonwealth People’s Forum 2018.

We talked about storytellers’ experiences, working with the Commonwealth Writers programme and the ways in which less-heard voices can influence public discourse.

CF: Please tell us how the work of the Commonwealth Writers Programme has supported your work and whether it has enhanced or impacted on your storytelling and if so, how?

Lisa: I would have to say, and this is no exaggeration, that the Commonwealth Writers programme changed the course of my career. They not only supported the development of my film, Auntie (2013), but they also premiered it in New Zealand and supported its screening at a variety of quite high-profile festivals. Due to the publicity and the conversations those screenings generated people started to tell me their own stories which then led me to say: ‘Wait a minute, there is so much more than just the one story that I told!’ A year after the film was out, Commonwealth Writers reached out and asked me whether I was willing to do some outreach which they offered to fund.

‘For a wider audience, especially policymakers, hopefully the effect is that they perceive and understand an issue in a different and more powerful way.’

What I created was Barrel Stories, an online oral history archive where I record and share the stories of people who have been affected by parental separation because of migration. The site also includes a list of resources and other work on the issue. Commonwealth Writers didn’t hesitate in saying, ‘How can we help? What do you need?’…They trusted me to pull it off and they helped me to understand my own process and the logistical and emotional pitfalls of getting involved with the recording of real stories. Out of that I developed a much deeper interest in non-fiction storytelling and two years ago I moved to the [United Kingdom] to do an MA in documentary.

Auntie (Harewood, 2013) follows a middle­-aged seamstress and respected caregiver in her rural Barbadian community

Now I’m in the process of developing this project across multiple platforms. I’ve hit this rich vein, not just of stories but of emotion and I feel a responsibility now to see it through. I want to create something that really gets to the heart of this issue and provides a tool for understanding and maybe even some healing where it’s needed.

All of this is a direct result of being selected for the Commonwealth Writers programme in 2012.

‘I would have to say, and this is no exaggeration, that the Commonwealth Writers programme changed the course of my career.’

CF: What are the most effective ways to reach people with your storytelling, and raise awareness of issues so that it influences public dialogue?

Lisa: I’m open to using all sorts of means to craft and to deliver the story I want to tell. I’ve made films, I’m building an audio archive, I’m experimenting with VR and immersive technologies and old school community workshops. As long as it works for the story and for the audience, I’m at a stage where I think beyond just film.

Harewood on the set of Auntie (Harewood, 2013)

From a content standpoint I’m interested in empowering the people whose stories I want to share. I want to help them to co-create the work with me. In that regard they are the first audience that I am trying to reach. I want them to feel heard and validated and supported by a community of other people who have shared similar experiences.

For a wider audience, especially policymakers, hopefully the effect is that they perceive and understand an issue in a different and more powerful way and are moved to act to bring about positive change. I have to be careful though not to allow myself to be burdened by an expectation of certain outcomes from this work. I have to be focused on telling the best stories that I can.

 

CF: How important is it to hear from storytellers outside of the mainstream, those less heard voices and less heard stories? Can such stories impact the dominant narrative?

Lisa: As a person from the Caribbean I grew up seeing so many terrible depictions of Caribbean people. Usually as happy-go-lucky, ‘everything is great, yeah man!’ people. And it sounds like a really silly thing… but when someone says this is how your country is and this is how these people act and sound and it’s not anything that you recognise, you feel really insulted and demeaned. Having other people tell our stories takes away so much from us if it’s not done well. I’m not saying that you can’t tell a story from a community that’s not your own. You can, but you have to do it with a great deal of sensitivity and a desire to get it right. So I’m really glad to be a part of a generation of filmmakers and writers and artists who are taking control of our own narrative. We can have rich, fully rounded portrayals instead of damaging stereotypes.

I’ve seen through my own work on Auntie and Barrel Stories just how amazing it is for an audience of Caribbean people to see and hear characters who they recognise. It’s almost a cliché to say people need to see themselves reflected but they do. It’s one way for them to make sense of their own lives and experiences and their place in the wider world.

Lisa Harewood is a film director. 

Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2018 shortlist announced

Posted on by Commonwealth Foundation

The shortlist for the 2018 Commonwealth Short Story Prize has been announced. This year there were 5,100 entries from 48 Commonwealth countries. Now 24 outstanding stories have been selected by an international judging panel. The shortlist has writers from 14 countries including, for the first time, Ghana and Samoa.

Access the shortlist here.

Ben Okri’s electrifying keynote on ending exclusion

Posted on by Gillian Cooper

Inclusion is at the heart of Sustainable Development Goal 16, but exclusion has become accepted across the Commonwealth.

How can institutions and civic voices ensure that inclusion, rather than exclusion, becomes the norm?

Ben Okri, one of Africa’s foremost authors and poets, opened the Commonwealth People’s Forum 2018 with an address on how civil society can breathe new life and purpose into the Commonwealth by ending exclusion. View his electrifying keynote below.

The power of stories at the Commonwealth People’s Forum 2018

Posted on by Will Forrester

Gaiutra Bahadur’s essay in We Mark Your Memory, a forthcoming anthology of writing by descendants of indenture, segues from Britain’s exit from the European Union into an exploration of her Guyanese great-uncle’s identity: a grandchild of indentured labour and an economist at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

This connection comes as Bahadur considers an increasingly pressing question: ‘How are we, actually, joined? And what kind of joining matters?’. Bahadur’s query is timely; it is a timeliness mirrored in the heading of the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London: ‘Towards a Common Future’.

In the run-up to CHOGM, the Commonwealth People’s Forum 2018 (CPF 2018) brings together civic voices from around the world to debate such queries facing a contemporary Commonwealth. Echoing the focus of CHOGM, CPF 2018 asks three questions: what would an inclusive Commonwealth look like? how can we ensure justice? and what are the imperatives for an accountable Commonwealth? These questions share similarities with the crux of Bahadur’s essay: ‘What kind of joining matters?’.

‘How are we, actually, joined? And what kind of joining matters?’

During CPF 2018 events curated by Commonwealth Writers, artists and writers will use varied forms of creative expression to ask these questions. Thirteen writers will read from two Commonwealth Writers publications which, while not directly envisaged in relation to the Forum’s themes, are underpinned by notions of inclusion, justice and accountability. The first is We Mark Your Memory, which features poetry, fiction and essays based on indentured legacies in the Chagos Islands, Fiji, Guyana, Liberia, Malaysia, Samoa, Sri Lanka, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago . The second is So Many Islands, an anthology of stories from the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Indian and Pacific Oceans. Both collections, at their heart, look at the ways in which we are joined.

In his foreword to So Many Islands, editor Nicholas Laughlin comments that the sea, which ‘insulates and isolates’ islands, is at once the force which ‘connects’. Indeed, by the start of CPF 2018, So Many Islands will have traversed these connections for its launches in Barbados, Bermuda, Fiji, Jamaica,  New Zealand, Samoa, St Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and the UK. So too in We Mark Your Memory writers from diverse and broad spaces are connected by joint legacies and common futures; as the collection moves between geographies, histories and genres, transoceanic links are revealed in unexpected ways. Both anthologies urgently demonstrate how creative expression and civic voices have a fundamental role to play in ensuring that our common future is inclusive, fair and accountable. The events at CPF 2018 hosted by Commonwealth Writers reflect this capacity, integrating rather than supplementing panel discussions and policy dialogues.

‘Amidst global uncertainty, creative endeavours hold the agency to both attest to the histories of diverse global identities and to ensure a renewed Commonwealth in which we are joined in equitable, just and vociferous ways.’

The format of the readings at CPF 2018 embody the connected spaces of the collections. Tracy Assing (Trinidad and Tobago), Angela Barry (Bermuda), Cecil Browne (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines), Kendel Hippolyte (Saint Lucia), Erato Ioannou (Cyprus) and Karlo Mila (Tonga) will read from their contributions to So Many Islands, and David Dabydeen (Guyana), Prithiraj Dullay (South Africa), Gabrielle Jamela Hosein (Trinidad), Fawzia Muradali Kane (UK), Gitanjali Pyndiah (Mauritius/UK), Mary Rokonadravu (Fiji) and Anita Sethi (UK) from their pieces in We Mark Your Memory.

These sessions comprise ‘intimate readings’, conducted in promenade, in which delegates walk from author to author, and in doing so experience and map the connections which join them. Commonwealth Writers will also open the CPF 2018 with a short film featuring definitions of ‘inclusivity’, ‘justice’ and ‘accountability’ by individuals across the Commonwealth. In a very literal sense, this film acts to amplify civic voices on a global stage. Finally, a session titled ‘Persistent Resistance’ will bring into dialogue music from members of the Nigerian floating radio station Chicoco Radio with discussion from global activists to ask what roles creative expression and myriad other forms of advocacy have in challenging injustice in a renewed Commonwealth.

Just as the CPF 2018 brings together creative voices and Commonwealth leaders to discuss global development, I consider my own ‘joining’, having recently become a part of the Commonwealth Writers team. This joining feels equally timely; as the varied projects coordinated by Commonwealth Writers cohere around CPF 2018, I have been able to contribute to and experience the capacity creative expression has to effect societal change. Bahadur closes her essay ‘left wading and wondering about the encounters the seas enable’. Amidst global uncertainty, creative endeavours hold the agency to both attest to the histories of diverse global identities and to ensure a renewed Commonwealth in which we are joined in equitable, just and vociferous ways.

Will Forrester is an intern for Commonwealth Writers.

Advocating for better health for people living with HIV and people who use

Issue

The prevalence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) amongst the adult population in Mauritius is estimated at 0.9 per cent, approximately 9,200 people, a large proportion of HIV transmissions were due to the sharing of contaminated needles. By 2014 this percentage had reduced from 68 per cent to 31 per cent thanks to successful harm reduction programmes. However, amongst new cases detected in 2015, there has been an increase in the prevalence rate of people who use drugs.

Project

Prevention Information Lutte contre le SIDA (PILS) is facilitating access to HIV health services for People Who Use Drugs (PWUDs) by promoting a better understanding of drug policies which can be used as a means of preventing HIV transmission among PWUDs and contribute to a reduction in HIV prevalence in general.

PILS is engaging in dialogue with policy and decision makers including members of parliament, prison officers, police departments and religious leaders to advocate for changes to legislation and policies on drug use and HIV that can better contribute to reducing HIV transmission and prevalence. They are also raising communities’ awareness of drug policies and their impact among on People Living with HIV and AIDS (PLHIV), at risk populations, and village councillors by organising and training a group of Community Health Advocates (CHAs) to lead awareness raising activities in their communities.

By the end of the project, it is estimated that over 7,000 people in the communities would have been reached by CHAs and that CHAs will have the necessary knowledge and expertise to continue to raise awareness among their communities once the project ends. It is also expected that by the end of the project a greater awareness about drug and HIV policies, and how they can be used to contribute to the reduction of HIV transmission and prevalence would have been generated. In addition, the project is likely to influence discussions on policy and legislation change on HIV and drug use during its duration.

Prevention Information Lutte Contre le Sida

PILS is the leading organisation working on HIV in Mauritius. It works in close collaboration with six national NGOs, reaching out to all relevant key affected populations. The main areas of work of the organisation are: provision of health care through its own health clinic; awareness raising on HIV prevention with most at risk populations; advocacy on HIV prevention with various stakeholders and capacity building of local and regional NGOs which work with key affected populations. It has been the civil society principal recipient for the Global Fund since 2012.

Advocating for better health for people living with HIV and people who use drugs

Issue

The prevalence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) amongst the adult population in Mauritius is estimated at 0.9 per cent, approximately 9,200 people, a large proportion of HIV transmissions were due to the sharing of contaminated needles. By 2014 this percentage had reduced from 68 per cent to 31 per cent thanks to successful harm reduction programmes. However, amongst new cases detected in 2015, there has been an increase in the prevalence rate of people who use drugs.

Project

Prevention Information Lutte contre le SIDA (PILS) is facilitating access to HIV health services for People Who Use Drugs (PWUDs) by promoting a better understanding of drug policies which can be used as a means of preventing HIV transmission among PWUDs and contribute to a reduction in HIV prevalence in general.

PILS is engaging in dialogue with policy and decision makers including members of parliament, prison officers, police departments and religious leaders to advocate for changes to legislation and policies on drug use and HIV that can better contribute to reducing HIV transmission and prevalence. They are also raising communities’ awareness of drug policies and their impact among on People Living with HIV and AIDS (PLHIV), at risk populations, and village councillors by organising and training a group of Community Health Advocates (CHAs) to lead awareness raising activities in their communities.

By the end of the project, it is estimated that over 7,000 people in the communities would have been reached by CHAs and that CHAs will have the necessary knowledge and expertise to continue to raise awareness among their communities once the project ends. It is also expected that by the end of the project a greater awareness about drug and HIV policies, and how they can be used to contribute to the reduction of HIV transmission and prevalence would have been generated. In addition, the project is likely to influence discussions on policy and legislation change on HIV and drug use during its duration.

Prevention Information Lutte Contre le Sida

PILS is the leading organisation working on HIV in Mauritius. It works in close collaboration with six national NGOs, reaching out to all relevant key affected populations. The main areas of work of the organisation are: provision of health care through its own health clinic; awareness raising on HIV prevention with most at risk populations; advocacy on HIV prevention with various stakeholders and capacity building of local and regional NGOs which work with key affected populations. It has been the civil society principal recipient for the Global Fund since 2012.