Richard Lord

Head of the Com­mon­wealth Queen Eliz­a­beth II opened the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, ad­vis­ing that this coun­try's mot­to–To­geth­er We As­pire, To­geth­er We Achieve–could as­sist mem­ber na­tions in their bid to achieve sus­tain­able and eq­ui­table de­vel­op­ment. "There could be no bet­ter de­scrip­tion of the Com­mon­wealth's ethos and no bet­ter guide­line to achieve this CHOGM-stat­ed goal of a more eq­ui­table and sus­tain­able fu­ture," she said, be­fore for­mal­ly open­ing the 20th CHOGM at the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, Queen's Park East, yes­ter­day.

Among those in the au­di­ence were Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ka­malesh Shar­ma, for­mer chair of the Com­mon­wealth Ugan­dan Pres­i­dent Yow­eri Kaguta Mu­sev­eni, and new chair T&T's Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. The Queen said the 60-year-old or­gan­i­sa­tion must now "prove its rel­e­vance be­yond its own bor­ders and de­vel­op a tru­ly glob­al per­spec­tive." She said the Com­mon­wealth could be proud of the fact that over the past 60 years it has shaped the in­ter­na­tion­al re­sponse to emerg­ing glob­al chal­lenges.

But she in­sist­ed the body should not be com­pla­cent. She said on the eve of next month's UN Con­fer­ence on Cli­mate Change in Copen­hagen, Den­mark, the Com­mon­wealth had "an op­por­tu­ni­ty to lead once more." Ad­mit­ting that the threat to the world's en­vi­ron­ment was not a new con­cern, the Queen said it had be­come "a glob­al chal­lenge which would con­tin­ue to af­fect the se­cu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty of mil­lions (of cit­i­zens) for years to come." She added that many of those af­fect­ed were among the most vul­ner­a­ble and many of the peo­ple least able to with­stand the ad­verse ef­fects of cli­mate change lived in the Com­mon­wealth. The Queen said an­oth­er area of op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Com­mon­wealth was nur­tur­ing its young peo­ple.

She said the fu­ture of the Com­mon­wealth lies with the one bil­lion (peo­ple) who were un­der 25 years of age. "The Com­mon­wealth must show that it is rel­e­vant to, and sup­port­ive of our young peo­ple who need to be con­vinced that the Com­mon­wealth can help them to re­alise their am­bi­tions," she stressed. In ex­press­ing her plea­sure to be back in the Caribbean state of T&T, The Queen said: "This re­gion is dear to the Com­mon­wealth." She said the past 12 months had been a stern test for mem­ber states and great re­source­ful­ness had been shown in or­der to meet the chal­lenges. She ad­vised the Com­mon­wealth that it must re­main com­mit­ted to build­ing re­silience among its small­er mem­bers.