National Consultation on  Civil Society’s Shadow Report for UN Committee of Migrant Workers-2017

WARBE Development Foundation organized a national consultation on CSO’s CMW Shadow Report with multi-stakeholders and advocates on 4 March 2017 at CIRDAP auditorium with the financial support from Swiss Development Corporation (SDC), technical support from MFA and Diplomatic Training Program (DTP) alumni; working group on behalf of 20 CSO organizations.

The national consultation started with a welcome speech to clarify the purpose of the consultation; followed by a swift presentation on Background and objective of the CSO Shadow Report and National CSO Consultation on CMW Shadow Report. These sessions were facilitated by Ms. Jasiya Khatoon, Director- WARBE DF and Ms. Nayela Akter, Programme Officer, HELVETAS Swiss Inter-cooperation respectively. In the open discussion session after the brief presentation on the CMW Shadow report by the CSOs, the participants urges to point out some major issues in the report such as: ensure accountability of the recruiting agencies activities and recruitment process, ensure the compensation and fair justice towards the deceased and injured migrants, strengthening the migrants friendly and gender sensitive services of Bangladesh High Commission abroad, establish cost effective remittance transfer methods and channel including extension of services of Probashi Kallayan Bank (PKB), Promote advocacy to the receiving countries to ratify the UN CMW 1990 and ensure representatives of migrants in Wage Earners Welfare Board.

Among the panel discussant, Syed Saiful Haque, Chairman-WARBE Development Foundation, Md Zahid Hossain, Human Rights Officer from UN Resident Coordinator’s Office, Dr. Meghna Guhathakurata, Commissioner, Bangladesh Human Rights Commission from Research Initiative of Bangladesh were present and provided some valuable suggestions. Dr. Justice Refaat Ahmed, Senior Judge of Supreme Court and CMW expert was chief guest of the consultation; whereas the program was moderated by Dr.Tanseem Siddique, Chairperson of RMMRU. The recommendations and suggestions from this consultation will incorporate at the draft Shadow report and will place to the CMW before 12 March 2017. The final report will be consider for the presentation in the 26^th Session of CMW (Committee on Migrant Workers) which will be held from 3-13 April 2017 at the Palais Wilson in Geneva, Switzerland.