Bangladesh Parliamentarians’ Caucus on Migration and Development

The formation of a united, all-party, advocacy platform blending former and present Members of Parliament to address various aspects of migration issues were initiated in 2013. Following the years of advocacy, the Bangladesh Parliamentarians’ Caucus on Migration and Development was formally established on 31st March 2017 to uphold the interest of the migrants and their families in the country of origin and beyond. Since then, the caucus has been working as an inclusive, diversified, and multi-sectoral advocacy body with its active engagement at national, regional and international levels, especially at the United Nations (UN). The Members of the Caucus Executive Committee are Barrister Shameem Haider Patwary; MP Chairperson, Advocate Hosne Ara Lutfa Dalia, Former; MP Co-Chairperson and Ms. Mahjabeen Khaled Former; MP Secretary-General.

An all-party united parliamentarians’ caucus, shall be working together irrespective of political party affiliation and status, to ensure equal rights for migrant workers, their family members and the vulnerable community, by advocating, enacting and monitoring the migration process, promoting safe, orderly and regular migration in laws, policies, national action plans and budgets of Bangladesh. The parliamentarians’ caucus shall serve as the focal group of Parliamentarians to work as an advocacy body to ensure the best interest of the migrant workers and their families by upholding their legitimate political, social, economic and cultural rights in the country of origin and beyond through its active engagement in local, national, regional and international platforms.

Bangladesh Parliamentarians’ Caucus works to place and recognizes the contribution of Bangladeshi migrant workers and diasporas in national development at the national parliament, to collectively engage at the local, national, regional and international levels in the development of decent migration friendly agreements and legislation and to recognize the need to consider national economic, and human security in the management of migration issues in the home, transit and destination countries.

Activities and responsibilities of Caucus are to arrange and participate in regular field visits to the migrant worker communities in the country and abroad, engaging local administration, MPs or other parliamentarians in order to gain a more robust understanding of the realities of migrant workers and in order to bring attention to migrant workers issues in the country and region, to organize seminars, press briefing or consultation on key issue areas in collaboration with CSOs, trade unions, and migrants’ rights advocates to share data, information and government initiatives, to engage in inter-parliamentary exchange visits to raise the issues of migrant workers’ rights and good practice on regular migration, to exercise the  parliamentary  functions  to  monitor  the  programs  of relevant ministries in line with different national legislation or law relating to migration and migrant workers, to advocate at national parliament regarding justified budgetary  allocation  for the welfare of migrant workers and their family members and innovative approach to ensure skilled and professional migration from the country, To review the ILO Convention 189: Decent Work for Domestic Workers,   the UN Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, as well as other core conventions of the ILO, in particular Conventions 87 and 98, and migrant worker conventions, 97 and 143 and campaign for the ratification of these instruments by the Government to keep align with the international human rights standard, to promote the objectives and program of the caucus to different intergovernmental processes at the national and international level including engaging with ASEAN and SAARC, To establish a national level forum for migrants and diasporas/NRB group engaging multi-level stakeholders including the major representation from migrants and To meet on quarterly basis to review the activities of the caucus and adopt mutated action plan for retaining the decent migration mandates.

Website Link: www.bdpcmd.org