Global summit on migration, development kicks off in Bangladesh

by Naim-Ul-Karim
DHAKA, Dec. 11 (NsNewsWire) — The 9th Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) summit began Saturday in Bangladesh capital Dhaka, with focus on adoption of two compacts for migrants and refugees,reports Xinhua.
Some 500 delegates including 300 government officials from about 125 countries and over 30 UN agencies, international organizations, global civil society and business are participating in the three-day GFMD summit.
The summit will begin intergovernmental negotiations leading to the adoption of two compacts for migrants and refugees, Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque had said earlier.
“The negotiations on the global compacts for migrants and refugees will be continued in the next two years,” said Haque, also GFMD 2016 chair-in-office, at a press briefing recently.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Saturday opened the summit in Dhaka‘s Bangabandhu International Conference Center (BICC), also known as Bangladesh China Friendship Conference Center, which China has recently renovated for the summit.
In her inaugural speech, Hasina urged world leaders to uphold the dignity and rights of migrants as GFMD moves to the global consultative process in the coming years.
She said world leaders must pledge and act to save the migrants from misery and agony.
Hasina expressed her satisfaction as the world accepted Bangladesh ideas for a comprehensive Global Compact for Migration Governance at the UN summit on Migrants and Refugee in September.
“We’re working with states and civil society to push for a comprehensive Global Compact of Migrants and Refugees that should get adopted in 2018 at the UN,” she said.
“I’m glad as the GFMD will focus on some of the challenging issues, like migrants in situations of crisis and conflicts, migration governance, diversity and harmony,” she added.
In line with the September 2006 report from the UN-GA High Level Dialogue on Migration and Development (HLD) and the GFMD Operating Modalities endorsed in Brussels in 2007, the GFMD is a voluntary, informal, non-binding and government-led process open to all states members and observers of the United Nations, to advance understanding and cooperation on the mutually reinforcing relationship between migration and development and to foster practical and action-oriented outcomes.
At the end of the 9th GFMD summit, Bangladesh would hand over chairmanship of the forum to Germany, Haque said.  Enditem