Thank you Excellences, Ladies and Gentlemen.

I take this opportunity to thank the current Chair Ecuador for their excellent leadership and a very successful and well organized Conference along with their warm hospitality. I am also pleased that United Arab Emirates, an important country in the field of migration is taking the responsibility to guide us through.

We are dealing with a defining issue of our time and no country can deal with it alone. For example, nearly 1.1 million people of Myanmar known as Rohingya was forcibly displaced from their ancestral home and Bangladesh is providing their temporary shelter, but cannot handle such a huge people on our own. We need proactive support of global community. There the GFMD provided a voluntary, informal, non-binding and government-led process which encouraged the Member States and other stakeholders to be engaged in an unconfined but effective manner.

While we discuss the future course of GFMD, May I say that the responsibility to decide the future of the GFMD lies squarely with us, the participating States. We can only get benefit from any undertaking if we believe in it. GFMD gave us two distinct opportunities, first, it is outside of UN’s strict discipline and politics and second, it is the only forum where States can informally interact with civil societies and the private sector on the issue of migration. In future, we want to continue this understanding.We want to see GFMD as a regular annual participatory process.

Excellencies,

A key objective of the GFMD is “…to foster practical and action-oriented outcomesat the national, regional and global levels..’’. So in commensurate with our discussions, we would like to see some tangible projects and outcomes so that we can take those to our people and show them the importance of having GFMD. We all know that one outstanding example in more than thousand words.

In future we would also like GFMD to substantially contribute towards achievement of SDGs as the issue of migration is strongly interlinked with other vital issues.A balance between governance issues and development issues should be struck, as migration is inherently involved with the development of the host as well as the country of origin.

We are now developing different regional mechanisms all over the world. In this respect, I would request that GFMD be well informed about different decisions on migration contained in these different regional initiatives.

Distinguished leaders,

Due to unprecedented development of ICT and advent of 4IR technologies, people now need less to displace and migrate as lot of works are now outsources overseas without requiring the physical presence of the overseas workers. Also, economic conditions have much improved in most of the developing countries and LDCs resulting into much less urgency to migrate.  In spite of these developments, the number of migrants are increasing fast every year. So there must be other factors which are responsible for this increase. One reason for increasing number of migrants or refugees or displaced persons is due to widespread violence, wars and the like. Another reason of displacement of people is due to erratic climate change who may be featured as climate migrants. Another group moves from one place of residents to another for better opportunities and may termed as ‘economic refugees or migrants’.

Given these scenario, countries or  agencies or groups that are responsible for creating violence and wars or creating global warming resulting in ‘climate migrants’, it is imperative that they should help rehabilitation of these displaced people or migrants.

Few years ago, 16 state attorneys of the US brought out a case to the US federal court stating that since their hospital billshave sky rocketed due to cancer treatment, largely due to consumption of cigarettes or smoking, therefore, the cigarette manufacturers must pay the bills. The distinguished judges gave the verdict and penalized cigarette manufactures billions of Dollars nearly 638 billion plus made them to pay for the cancer patients. Following US Federal court example, GFMD may think of identifying the culprits of wars and violence, suppliers of mass destruction or that of global warming and create a global awareness and public opinion to force them to share the burden of rehabilitation and reintegration of migrants, refugees and displaced people.It may be time to discuss and analyze these issues.

Excellences,

While support UAE’s integrated proposal especially of the six themes and sub themes, the timeline and the ultimate design of the Summit, we may request to include a discussion of the issues I just raised.

We support strengthening the GFMD Support Unit and the idea of a solution-driven marketplace for problems and their solutions at Summits.

Regarding a proposal of having all the summits in Geneva, we would prefer to go to different regions and countries if a host is found because it helps to present different and diversified aspects of migration, its challenges and possible solutions to the Member States. Exposure to different cultures is another advantage and it is what migration is all about.

In conclusion, may I suggest that GFMD must be owned by all stakeholders at their respective levels of engagements. It is not our option, it is our responsibility.

Joy Bangla

Joy Bangabandhu.