3-day meet to discuss migration issues

Around 400 local and foreign delegates are expected to join the 9th Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) Summit scheduled to be held in Dhaka from December 10 to12.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will open the Ninth GFMD Summit on December 10 in presence of high-level officials to open a common space for discussing safe migration issues among the governments, international organizations, civil society, private sector and other non-state partners - for interaction between governments and global civil society and other relevant stakeholders. Global Forum on Migration and Development is the best platform for global discourse, cooperation and partnership-building on migration and development, an initiative of the United Nations member states to address the migration and development inter-linkages.
Bangladesh, the Chair-in-Office in the 8th GFMD summit, will organise the 9th summit under the overarching theme, "Migration that works for Sustainable Development of All: Towards a Transformative Migration Agenda."
"Participants' of the member states will join efforts towards developing a transformative migration agenda while ensuring the achievement of migration-related goals and targets of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development which is the main focus of the 9th Summit," a senior official of the Foreign Ministry told the Daily Observer on Tuesday.
A panel discussion on the rights and welfare of migrants, challenges faced by women and children in the context of international migration, labour exploitation, and the importance of the international normative human rights framework would also be discussed in the meeting, sources said.
"Bangladesh will try its best to uphold the trust bestowed upon the country by taking the forum to a new height during its chairmanship," said Foreign Secretary Mohammad Shahidul Haque. He assured that Bangladesh would place the issue of migration and development at its due place in the post-2015 Development Agenda.
There is no way to discuss any bi-lateral issue in GFMD meeting, however, six to eight government-led roundtable sessions would be organized on the future of the forum, and special session on the platform for partnerships would discuss six specific topics, according to the Foreign Ministry.
These six RT sessions are focused on topics that evoke the increasing difficulties affecting migrants and the challenges to governments and other migration and development actors: namely, reducing the cost of migration; connectivity and migration; migration, diversity and harmonious societies, protection of migrants in all situations, migrants in the time of crises and governance of migration.