Above: Trinidad Foreign Minister Winston Dookeran

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Is it time for a new diplomacy of development?

That’s the view held by Trinidad and Tobago Foreign Minister Winston Dookeran, who made the call during a speech to Commonwealth Finance Ministers in Sri Lanka this week.

He was speaking during a a meeting focusing on a concept paper written by the government of Sri Lanka called “growth with equity: inclusive develpment.”

Dookeran urged his colleagues to embrace the premise “that the world economy is now engaged in several new starts at the same time.”

“Small economies are neither isolated nor insulated from world security and economic ripples and must accept the new interpretation of the reality where forces of convergence are now shaping new development architecture, thus requiring a new diplomacy of development,” Dookeran said.

He urged the assembled officials to “take the necessary steps” to inform that new kind of diplomacy.

It’s not the first time Dookeran has urged his colleagues to rethink their philosophies.

Dookeran has made news in recent months by calling for the Caribbean integration movement to rethink its existing paradigm, citing what he called a “structural problem” related to development.

“We need to take a leap of faith towards the future and change our development,” he said earlier this year.