CPA Small Branches New CPA Small Branches Strategic Plan launches for the development of the network over next three years The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the CPA Small Branches Chairperson, Hon. Angelo Farrugia, MP, Speaker of the Parliament of Malta, launched the CPA Small Branches Strategic Plan 2018-2020 to the wider CPA membership in 2018. The Plan identified five strategic outcomes for the CPA Small Branches Network and sets out a roadmap to achieving them. In the foreword to the Strategic Plan, the CPA Small Branches Chairperson wrote: “I would like to encourage all CPA Small Branches to implement this Strategic Plan on multiple levels: internationally, locally, but also individually. It is vital that the international community keeps hearing the voice of smaller states, so that their challenges are heard and tackled, but it is also vital that this Strategic Plan is implemented on the ground by ourselves; key to the success of the Strategy is ownership by us, coming together as a collective.” The smallest of the CPA’s legislatures seek to meet the same expectations of service delivery as larger legislatures and in doing so, they recognise the importance of constantly innovating in the face of fiscal and human resource constraints; they recognise the central role of parliament in meeting the challenges of combatting corruption; and the threats in the face of climate change to some of the
Commonwealth’s most vulnerable. The new strategy focuses on key thematic areas and development activities with measurable outcomes; this will build parliamentary capacity for CPA Small Branches and create greater opportunities for the sharing of knowledge, parliamentary strengthening and cooperation across the network. The new strategic plan was developed by the new CPA Small Branches Chairperson, who hosted a strategy consultation meeting in Malta in October 2017 with representatives of each CPA Region where there are Small Branches (seven of the nine CPA Regions) to facilitate discussion and develop the plan. The strategic planning meeting, which took place at the Parliament of Malta, was attended by: Africa Region: Hon. Ahmed Afif, MP and Hon. Churchill Gill, MP (Seychelles); Australia Region: Mrs Joy Burch, MLA, Speaker of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly; British Islands and Mediterranean (BIM) Region: Hon. Samantha Sacramento, MP, Minister for Housing and Equality (Gibraltar); Caribbean, Americas and Atlantic (CAA) Region: Hon. Michael Carrington, MP, Speaker of the
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Barbados House of Assembly; South-East Asia Region: Hon. Hamdan Bahari, MP, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of The State of Perlis, Malaysia; Pacific Region: Hon. Simon Pentanu, Speaker of the House of Representatives of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. The new CPA Small Branches Strategic Plan was presented to the 36th CPA Small Branches Conference in November 2017, ahead of the wider 63rd Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference (CPC) in Dhaka, Bangladesh before being approved by the CPA Executive Committee at the Mid-Year meeting in March 2018.