Peter Kellner, chairman of the Royal Commonwealth Society, writing in the Trinidad Express on Monday.

Commonwealth conferences used to matter. Their decisions helped to end Apartheid in South Africa and white rule in Zimbabwe. Their debates, especially during the Thatcher era, made big news.

No longer. Apart from insiders and a few obsessives, who knows or cares what Commonwealth leaders decided two years ago in Trinidad, or what they will discuss this week in Australia? The institution is sleep-walking towards irrelevance. As chairman of the Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS), a charity devoted to the promotion of Commonwealth links and values, I fear for the future. The Commonwealth could become one of the world's great 21st century networks. It won't unless the Presidents and Prime Ministers who gather in Perth insist on big changes.

Fortunately, they will have a route map in front of them. Two years ago, prompted by damning research commissioned by the RCS, they appointed an Eminent Persons Group to plan reform. It has done its work, defied many sceptics and recommended radical reform. In particular, it wants the Commonwealth to take a far more active stand on human rights.
 
It records "a growing perception that the Commonwealth has become indifferent because it fails to stand up for the values that it has declared as fundamental to its existence". In a thinly-veiled attack on the Commonwealth Secretariat—its civil service—the group warns against "complacency and inertia", an attitude that already "poses the most serious threat to the continued relevance and vitality of the Commonwealth itself".

So what should the Commonwealth's leaders decide next week? Here are three things that would kick-start revival. First, they should adopt the group's recommendation to appoint an independent human rights commissioner, tasked with monitoring violations in member states and demanding action when violations occur.

At present, the Commonwealth acts against only the most egregious offenders, such as Zimbabwe and Fiji. No action has been taken against, for example, Uganda or Malawi for outlawing homosexuality, or for failing to prevent the persecution of lesbian and gay people.

Secondly, Commonwealth leaders should reject the canard that human rights are a white, western idea that rich liberals foist on poor countries with different values.

Earlier this year, when the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution attacking violations of human rights on grounds of sexuality, its main sponsor was not Britain or Canada or Australia, but South Africa.

Or consider what happened two years ago in India when Delhi's High Court deemed as unconstitutional a nineteenth century law banning homosexuality. Far from bowing before historic western values, the court explicitly rejected one repressive feature of India's colonial inheritance.

The point is not just that basic human rights are universal in principle, but that they are being asserted with increasing confidence in poor societies as well as rich ones. The Commonwealth Secretariat should be leading the charge for all human rights to be respected in all 54 member states. Instead it has so far kept off the battlefield.

Now it is possible that the Secretariat will seek to fudge the issue in Perth by supporting the proposal for a human rights commissioner, but then controlling their appointment, terms of reference and resources in such a way that they prove impotent. Commonwealth leaders must prevent that happening.

How they rise to their third challenge will tell us whether they really mean business. After Perth, the next Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting is due to take place in 2013 in Sri Lanka. Although the country's civil war is now over, and some emergency regulations have been scrapped, controversies over its human rights record remain.

In the past few weeks, both Human Rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists have complained that people can still be detained for up to 18 months without charge under a 1979 law that has not been repealed.

Amnesty International has also stepped in, calling for Sri Lanka's government to release "thousands of people" held in detention. Moreover, there is the unfinished business from the civil war: a UN expert panel concluded earlier this year that it had found "credible allegations" of war crimes by all sides.

One option next week is for the leaders of the Commonwealth to choose another venue for 2013—probably Mauritius, which has won well-deserved accolades for the quality of its governance. Another option is to insist that Sri Lanka scrap detention without trial, prosecute the war criminals in its ranks and prove its commitment to human rights.

The significance of the decision is hard to overstate.

The Commonwealth's ability to become a respected 21st century global network rests on its commitment to democracy and human rights.

For this week's meeting to confirm Sri Lanka unconditionally as hosts in two years' time would be to confirm the worst fears that the Commonwealth has utterly lost its way.