Sen­a­tor the Ho­n­ourable Dr Amery Browne, Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs, met with Mrs Au­ro­ra Noguera-Ramkissoon, Li­ai­son Of­fi­cer of the Unit­ed Na­tions Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNF­PA), sub-re­gion­al of­fice of the Caribbean, to con­verse on var­i­ous is­sues im­pact­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, both par­ties re­as­sur­ing their com­mit­ment to work­ing to­geth­er on solv­ing rel­e­vant is­sues. De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease...

Sen­a­tor the Ho­n­ourable Dr. Amery Browne, Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs, met with Mrs. Au­ro­ra Noguera-Ramkissoon, Li­ai­son Of­fi­cer of the Unit­ed Na­tions Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNF­PA), Sub-re­gion­al Of­fice for the Caribbean, on 25th Oc­to­ber, 2022 at the Min­istry’s head­quar­ters. 

Min­is­ter Browne con­grat­u­lat­ed Mrs. Noguera-Ramkissoon on the valu­able work done by the UNF­PA and ex­pressed com­mit­ment to fa­cil­i­tate the work of the agency. Dis­cus­sions cen­tred around the UNF­PA’s im­ple­men­ta­tion of a strate­gic plan that fo­cused on achiev­ing three trans­for­ma­tive re­sults, name­ly: 

♦End­ing un­met need for fam­i­ly plan­ning - in­clud­ing ex­pand­ed ac­cess to con­tra­cep­tion; 
♦End­ing ma­ter­nal death; and 
♦End­ing vi­o­lence against women and girls. 

The UNF­PA is work­ing on im­ple­ment­ing a UN Mul­ti-Coun­try Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Co­op­er­a­tion Frame­work be­tween 2022 and 2026, which forms part of the goal to­wards achiev­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions’ 2030 Agen­da. 

The fund is work­ing with gov­ern­ments and civ­il so­ci­ety to as­sist the most vul­ner­a­ble groups which in­clude mi­grants, women with HIV, per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties and ado­les­cents. They have in­creased their fo­cus on ad­dress­ing hu­man traf­fick­ing, gen­der based vi­o­lence, sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion and abuse. 

The meet­ing con­clud­ed with the UNF­PA’s of­fer of as­sis­tance in the Gov­ern­ment’s roll­out of its de­vel­op­ment man­date. Both par­ties con­veyed a com­mit­ment for con­tin­ued mu­tu­al sup­port and col­lab­o­ra­tion for the ben­e­fit of all.