Bangladesh is going to organise the ninth meeting of Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) in Dhaka in December.
Migration is a sensitive, political, development and social issue and Bangladesh wants to push for its new governance structure in the GFMD, which is a global platform on discussion, Foreign Secretary M Shahidul Haque said at a press briefing Monday.
He said attitude and perception towards migration need to be changed, otherwise the problems related to it would never solve.
Representatives from 160 origin, destination and transit countries including over 50 ministers are expected to take part in the GFMD, which will begin in the second week of December, he said.
He said 2016 is the first year of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Bangladesh wants to set the tone for the global development architecture as far as migration issue is concerned.
Dhaka has proposed the GFMD theme “Migration that works for Sustainable Development of All: Towards a transformative agenda” which is essentially be based on SDG plus approach.
In this context, the event would make Bangladesh more politically important in the international map, Haque said.
The foreign secretary said migration was never an apolitical issue and part of geopolitics and it is very much visible in Europe where migration crisis is at its pick.
He lamented that some countries on different occasions tried to see the migration issue through security prism but it would ultimately have a negative impact on the whole world.
It should be seen as means of development, he said adding at present migration crisis is ongoing at Europe and at the Bay of Bengal where Bangladeshis, Rohingyas and other people were smuggled to different countries.
In this backdrop, the GFMD meeting in Dhaka would create an important space for having a decision on migration, he said.
Bangladesh became the chair of the GFMD from January 1 this year for one year and it will hand over the chairmanship to Germany in the December meeting.
A series of sub-meetings of GFMD will be held in Dhaka, Geneva, New York and Bangkok throughout the year.