Malta is preparing for power. In November, it's due to host the Commonwealth's biennial Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), at which it will start a two-year stint at the helm and show that the international body is “Adding Global Value”. The official CHOGM website credits members collectively with great clout, and promises that Malta will lead boldly on “important issues [that] have been missed by other global institutions.” Although those issues aren't identified in any detail, the government regards itself as especially well-placed to work out what they are, highlighting Malta's position “at the heart of the Mediterranean'”, and its place “throughout history as a bridge between North Africa and Europe.”
The claims, hyperbolic though they might sound, aren't precisely empty. Malta has direct experience of a crisis that needs all the leadership it can get—the current surge of emigrants fleeing poor, repressive and war-torn regions in Africa and the Middle East—and nowhere has been more affected than the Mediterranean. Some 137,000 people crossed its waters northwards during the first six months of 2015 (at least 2,000 others drowned), and though most made landfall at Lampedusa or Sicily, Malta has been the arrival point for a disproportionately large number. Indeed, the country's small population means that (if the figures for 2012 still hold true) the ratio of asylum seekers to ordinary residents there is higher than in any other European state.
