Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says that as a di­rect out­come of the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in Perth, Aus­tralia, her gov­ern­ment is tak­ing steps to draw this coun­try clos­er to the Com­mon­wealth part­ners. Speak­ing at the clos­ing news cer­e­mo­ny, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that Trinidad and To­ba­go, as a di­rect con­se­quence of the meet­ing, will be "step­ping up its bi­lat­er­al con­ver­sa­tions with mem­ber states to­wards re­lax­ing the re­quire­ments for Com­mon­wealth cit­i­zens en­ter­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go for busi­ness or hol­i­day. In this way, we can serve as the bridge be­tween the Com­mon­wealth and South Amer­i­ca."

She said T&T will be ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of di­rect flights be­tween South Africa, In­dia and this coun­try. For her, the Perth CHOGM was of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance both be­cause of its re­form agen­da and its fo­cus on is­sues crit­i­cal to its mem­ber states in­clud­ing small is­land de­vel­op­ing states such as Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Prime Min­is­ter said: "With re­spect to the re­form agen­da, Heads agreed to a se­ries of ac­tions to main­tain the rel­e­vance of the Com­mon­wealth and to en­sure its ef­fec­tive­ness in re­spond­ing to con­tem­po­rary chal­lenges."

She said the Heads reaf­firmed their com­mit­ment to the val­ues and prin­ci­ples of the Com­mon­wealth; agreed to the strength­en­ing of the role of the Com­mon­wealth Min­is­te­r­i­al Ac­tion Group (CMAG),the cus­to­di­an of these very val­ues and prin­ci­ples, with­out con­sid­er­able in­crease in cost to mem­ber states. Ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter: "Strength­en­ing of CMAG is a pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment and will go a long way to pre­serv­ing Com­mon­wealth val­ues, as well as act as an ef­fec­tive check on any at­tacks up­on hu­man rights in Mem­ber states. "T&T is grate­ful for CARI­COM sup­port for al­low­ing us, rep­re­sent­ed by Dr. Ram­bachan, to con­tin­ue as a mem­ber of CMAG for a sec­ond term. With our Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs as a mem­ber, we will be able to re­main en­gaged as we strength­en CMAG's role to deal with se­ri­ous and per­sis­tent vi­o­la­tions of Com­mon­wealth val­ues."

She said, al­so, the Char­ter of the Com­mon­wealth is to be ap­proved by lead­ers fol­low­ing a meet­ing of Com­mon­wealth For­eign Min­is­ters in Sep­tem­ber 2012 af­ter a process of con­sul­ta­tion to en­sure that the prin­ci­ples and as­pi­ra­tions of the 54 mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions are ful­ly re­flect­ed in the Char­ter. "The Char­ter is ex­pect­ed to draw to­geth­er el­e­ments in­clud­ed in all agree­ments and de­c­la­ra­tions made by Com­mon­wealth mem­ber states dat­ing back to the Sin­ga­pore De­c­la­ra­tion of Com­mon­wealth Prin­ci­ples of 1971, which forms the as­so­ci­a­tion's fun­da­men­tal val­ues and prin­ci­ples," said Per­sad-Bisses­sar. She said the lead­ers al­so agreed to the Perth De­c­la­ra­tion on Food Se­cu­ri­ty Prin­ci­ples to ad­dress the volatil­i­ty of glob­al food mar­kets which has re­sult­ed in hu­man­i­tar­i­an crises around the world, af­fect­ing vul­ner­a­ble de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, and to adopt mea­sures for fi­nan­cial sup­port to in­crease food pro­duc­tion in African coun­tries.

Col­lab­o­ra­tion agree­ments

In ad­di­tion to the re­form agen­da, this CHOGM de­lib­er­at­ed and agreed to col­lab­o­rate on a range of po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, so­cial and en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges of im­por­tance to its mem­ber states. These in­clud­ed, in­ter alia, is­sues such as:

• Cli­mate Change and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment;

• Ef­fec­tive re­source man­age­ment;

• At­tain­ment of the Mil­len­ni­um De­vel­op­ment Goals;

• Uni­ver­sal ac­cess to health care in­clud­ing ac­cel­er­at­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Po­lit­i­cal De­c­la­ra­tion of the UN High-Lev­el Meet­ing on the Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol of Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases spear­head­ed by CARI­COM states;

• Mi­gra­tion

• Hu­man Traf­fick­ing

• Ter­ror­ism

• Gen­der equal­i­ty

• Trade re­lat­ed is­sues, in­clud­ing the Do­ha De­vel­op­ment Round.