The Commonwealth has expressed its solidarity with Bangladesh on Rohingya issue and officials believe it would exert pressure on Myanmar.
The 54-nation grouping not only expressed solidarity but also emphasised on implementing the Kofi Annan Commission report on Rakhine state in and addressed it as the root cause of Rohingya crisis.
An official, who was involved in the process, said, “This is the first time an outcome document of Commonwealth summit included a paragraph related to Bangladesh.”
This is a big achievement for Bangladesh diplomacy as some member countries were not comfortable with the issue, he said.
“The countries felt that as Myanmar is not a member of Commonwealth, so an issue related to it should not be included in the outcome document but after pursuing aggressive diplomacy, we successfully included the paragraph in the final document,” the official said.
The Commonwealth expresses its solidarity with Bangladesh affected by the Rohingya influx, the clause read said.
It also commended Bangladesh for sheltering the Rohingyas, who according to UN were facing ‘ethnic cleansing.
‘Towards a common future’
The theme of the Commonwealth head of government’s summit was ‘Towards a common future’ for the all 53 nations amid Brexit.
“The United Kingdom is negotiating to pull out from European Union after 2019. In this backdrop, the UK wants to engage more with the commonwealth members to have more trade, investment and other cooperation,” said another official.
The Commonwealth has set a target to have $2 trillion trade among the members by 2030, he said adding, “It also wants to have common investment framework so that members can make cross-border investment easily.”
Multilateral trading system
The existing global trade regime is challenged by the United States. But, the Commonwealth where Bangladesh, UK, Australia, Canada, India and others supported the free trade regime reflected in the outcome document.
The support for the free trade is extremely important for countries like Bangladesh, which do not have much capacity to maneuver in the rough weather, the official said.
Bangladesh exports over $35 billion worth of products and over 4 million females work in the readymade garment sector alone.