CFOM International Director William Horsley co-wrote the research report on media-related laws and practices in Commonwealth member countries. This article was first published in the Commonwealth Round Table

In Charles Dickens’ novel Little Dorrit, the Circumlocution Office is a fictional government department which embodies the principle of How Not To Do It. Dickens’ satire portrays a place of pompous officials who prioritise obstruction, evasion, and self-preservation so that nothing ever gets done.

Today, friends of the Commonwealth need to warn the organisation and its 56 member countries that they risk becoming a modern target of derision for neglecting their public pledges related to freedom of expression, judicial independence and democratic accountability.

Those fundamental values are invoked in the Commonwealth Principles on Freedom of Expression and the Role of the Media in Good Governance which were adopted exactly a year ago at the 2024 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa. At that time, heads of government raised expectations about purposeful and coordinated action to come by proclaiming that “Member states should promote the widest possible awareness of these principles and ensure their observance.”

A year later, though, a brittle and defensive institutional silence appears to have settled over the commitment made in Samoa that member states should take “concrete and meaningful steps” to implement the 11-point Media Principles within their domestic frameworks. Are the Commonwealth’s landmark Media Principles already being airbrushed out?

At a meeting with Commonwealth Accredited Organisations on 15 July, the incoming Secretary General, Shirley Botchwey, acknowledged that her office has a mandate from government heads in Samoa to promote the implementation of the Principles; but when asked what practical means might be used to achieve that goal – including pressure on governments and active collaboration with non-government groups – she spoke of applying quiet diplomacy in the form of  “the good offices of the SG”, which are only exercised behind closed doors.

The text of the Commonwealth Media Principles falls short of the most exacting standards of international human rights law as set out in United Nations resolutions on the safety of journalist and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. But they spell out three essential obligations of states: to remove excessively restrictive laws that obstruct the legitimate work of journalists, to create a safe and enabling environment for media workers who face threats of violence; and to take “decisive steps” to end impunity.

 Imagining an “alternative” Commonwealth

In an imagined version of the Commonwealth – one in which functioning mechanisms would hold member states accountable for their public commitments – the Media Principles could serve as an agreed set of minimum standards which governments must observe to comply with the organisation’s fundamental political principles. Egregious or systemic violations would be called out, and remedial actions promoted. Such a mechanism would provide the Commonwealth immediately with a practical tool to address troubling cases, such as these:

On 2 October, police stormed the Pakistan National Press Club in Islamabad in pursuit of anti-government protestors who had taken refuge there. A dozen officers were filmed manhandling and beating journalists with batons, causing injuries. One newspaper called it “a new low for press freedom” in Pakistan.

On 18 September, the president of the Maldives ratified a Media and Broadcasting Regulation Law which the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights denounced as incompatible with the country’s obligations under international law.  Critics called it “a takeover of the media by the executive branch.”

In Malta, 16 October 2025 marks the eighth anniversary of the murder in 2017 of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in a mafia-style car bomb attack that shocked Europe. The suspected mastermind has still not been brought to trial and he was recently released from jail on bail, prompting fresh expressions of concerns about an ingrained political “culture of impunity” surrounding the killing.

A common feature of these instances – and many like them – is the total silence of the Commonwealth in the face of apparent breaches of its declared principles and standards. The ‘How Not to Do It’ principle is alive and well in Marlborough House, it seems.

Constructive proposals and action-oriented dialogue

On 9 September 2025, three Commonwealth civil society organisations published a 175-page research report, Who Controls the Narrative? Legal Restrictions on Freedom of Expression in the Commonwealth, which reveals how criminal laws across the Commonwealth are routinely misused to stifle free expression and legitimate media freedom.

The report is a collaboration between the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, the Commonwealth Journalists Association, and the Commonwealth Lawyers Association. It finds that punitive laws on defamation, sedition and blasphemy are frequently misused to make media reporting a criminal offence in member states; and that out of 213 recorded murders of journalists in 19 states between 2006 and 2023 the perpetrators have been prosecuted and punished in only eight cases. In other words, impunity is the norm. These figures make a mockery of the Commonwealth’s claims to be a bulwark of law and democracy.

On the positive side, eight Commonwealth countries, including five in Africa, have abolished criminal defamation provisions in their domestic laws since 2018. In the spirit of its recently-adopted Media Principles, the Commonwealth must use its convening power, together with civil society, to hasten the removal of colonial-era punitive laws in every member state.

The Secretary-General’s newly-unveiled 5-year Strategic Plan also foresees “an early warning system that will track signs of democratic risk” through the use of strengthened monitoring and evaluation systems. That matches a recommendation made by the authors of the Who Controls the Narrative? report: that the Commonwealth should actively ally itself in good faith with the goals of the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity . UNESCO, the UN agency for freedom of expression and journalists’ safety, offers essential support and expertise which can assist the Commonwealth with collecting data on killings of journalists and promoting state accountability by means of effective judicial investigations into those killings.

UNESCO also stands ready to help the Commonwealth to benefit from engagement with the global Media Freedom Coalition as well as civil society programmes to accelerate the necessary legislative reforms in the member countries.

The Commonwealth can take up these open opportunities and engage purposefully with professional organisations to successfully counter the alarming trends towards authoritarianism and the suppression of free media; or it can leave itself open to being labelled a ‘How Not To Do It’ organisation.