The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) is drawing to a close, with some late agreements from the summit that started in a storm of allegations and outcry.

The leaders that attended this year’s CHOGM summit in Sri Lanka have released a communiqué of cooperation on several issues. They have showed a pledge for unity in reducing poverty, improving trade and tackling youth affairs.

Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse says the discussions were “fruitful”, though the view seen through the lens of the media was one of anger and division of Sri Lanka’s human rights record.

“I am happy with the outcome we have reached at this CHOGM,” Mr Rajapakse said, despite much of his time being spent battling allegations his troops slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians at the end of country’s long-running internal conflict.

Possibly the most significant development of the several-day summit was an agreement that Australia will provide two navy patrol boats to help Sri Lanka fight people smugglers.

“It is important that Sri Lanka has an enhanced search-and-rescue capacity, an enhanced interdiction capacity and that's what these two Bay class patrol boats will offer the Sri Lankan navy,” Prime Minister Tony Abbott said.

“Issues covered in the communiqué include development, political values, global threats, challenges and Commonwealth cooperation,” the Sri Lankan president said.

“Achieving growth with equity and inclusive development must be one of the priorities of the Commonwealth.”

Australia hosted the last CHOGM event, and so Prime Minister Tony Abbott was tasked at this summit with handing the chairmanship to Sri Lanka. In doing so, he said he wanted to be “good mates” with Colombo but that “more needed to be done” for the nation to address its civil rights history.