Mauritius joins India and Canada in refusing to send a premier to Sri Lanka, which is accused of widespread human rights abuses against its Tamil minority and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians during its 2009 defeat of Tamil Tiger rebels.
"This is a decision taken by a sovereign Mauritius in the face of the absence of progress in Sri Lanka on the respect of human rights," Prime Minister Navin Chandra Ramgoolam told the Mauritian parliament.
He said Mauritius, which is to host the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 2015, believed that "human rights are more important than everything else".
The prime minister also told AFP that the decision was taken because he had "closely followed the human rights situation" in Sri Lanka.
It will be the first time since the island's independence in 1968 that a Mauritian prime minister will be absent from a Commonwealth summit. The Indian Ocean island will instead be represented at the 53-member bloc's summit in Colombo by its