Dhaka thinks upcoming UN summit a defining moment for migrants, refugees

Spearheading migration issues at the global level, Bangladesh considers the upcoming UN summit a “defining moment” for migrants and refugees.

This is because, as Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque has said, world leaders for the first time will make a “political commitment” for a better international response to the challenges emerging from large movements of people around the globe.

Bangladesh is the current chair of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), having taken charge on Jan 1 this year, the first year of the new SDGs.

The refugee and migration issue received wide attention after the recent migration crisis in the EU and the Bay of Bengal, when many people were found floating on boats.

Heads of state and government, including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, will participate in a high-level summit in New York on Sep 19, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The summit is expected to adopt an ‘Outcome Document’ and its two frameworks, one on migration governance and the other on refugee response.

Ahead of that summit, the Bangladesh government in association with the intergovernmental body IOM and UN agencies ILO and UNHCR organised a seminar in Dhaka on Saturday.

The foreign secretary, who worked for eleven years with the IOM on lien, told the seminar that the outcome document, which has already been negotiated, was a “political declaration” for all UN member States.

“When the Compact on Migration and the Refugee Response Framework is finally in force in early 2018, it will change the way migration and refugee situations have been addressed until now,” he said.

The Migration Compact was unanimously accepted by UN member states earlier following Bangladesh’s proposal.

Bangladesh believes the current mechanism of dealing with migration should be changed. After World War II, the migration and refugee issues have been dealt with differently as in those days there were mostly refugees, not migrants.

The UNHCR, which deals with refugee issues, and the IOM that deals with migration issues were established at the time.

But now there are more migrants than refugees and sometimes migrants are becoming refugees and refugees are becoming migrants, which calls for a new mechanism to deal with those issues.

Activists believe the upcoming summit will be a “watershed moment” to strengthen governance of international migration and a unique opportunity for creating a more responsible, predictable system for responding to large movements of refugees and migrants.

The seminar in Dhaka provided recommendations for the Bangladesh delegation, for their effective participation at the UN summit and following up on the commitments of the Outcome Document, the IOM said.

It brought together representatives of the government, UN agencies, development partners, academicians, international NGOs, civil society, migrant associations, employer’s and worker’s associations.