Mr. Rudd's announcement follows intense lobbying by gay activists from around the world, much of it coordinated by human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who wrote to Kevin Rudd on September 5, urging him to ensure that decriminalisation and gay human rights are on the agenda of CHOGM.

A spokeswoman for Kevin Rudd said:

"Australia is a global advocate of non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and encourages all countries to decriminalise homosexuality by removing all laws imposing criminal penalties for homosexual conduct."

Mr Tatchell, director of the new human rights organisation, the Peter Tatchell Foundation, said:
"More than 40 Commonwealth countries currently criminalise homosexuality, mostly as a result of laws that were imposed by Britain in the nineteenth century during the era of colonialism. The penalties for homosexuality include 25 years jail in Trinidad and Tobago and 20 years plus flogging in Malaysia. Several Commonwealth countries stipulate life imprisonment: Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Uganda, Bangladesh and Guyana."

"In recent years there have been homophobic witch-hunts in several Commonwealth countries, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Kenya and Ghana."

"CHOGM has never even discussed - let alone supported - gay equality and human rights. It is long overdue that CHOGM addresses this important humanitarian issue, which it has neglected for far too long. We hope that this year's CHOGM will end these decades of silence and inaction."

These are the four proposals that Peter Tatchell and other gay rights campaigners want to see on the CHOGM agenda and that they want all Commonwealth member states to adopt: