Nepal Foreign Affairs (KATHMANDU, 15 November 2018) – The 5th Senior Officials’ Meeting of the Colombo process has commenced here in the capital from today.
The Colombo Process is an important regional mechanism for labour, migrant workers and good governance.
The meeting will hold intensive discussions on the opportunities and challenges regarding safe migration and come up with a proposal for giving a concrete shape to the Colombo Process’ future.
Addressing the inaugural session of the Senior Officials’ Meeting, Minister for Labour Employment and Social Security Gokarna Bista has stressed on promoting safe migration. He added that the migration is considered as an important vehicle for the development of both the host and sending countries.
Ensuring the Human Rights and well being of the migrant workers has become a shared priority.
He further believed that the forum will be an immense opportunities to facilitate strategic partnership and collective efforts to address the existing challenges.
Minister Bista highlighted that the forum is an effective place to hold serious talks about these issues of migration and working groups as working groups have met 18 times over the last two years. He said” to improve the lives of migrant workers by protecting their fundamental rights at work, is the core indicator for our impact.
The Labour Minister also urged all members to make the forum more and more productive and effective in the area as members are agreed on consular support, operationalization of migration related SDG goals, migrant health and promotion of equality of women migrant workers.
Government ministers, high officials and stakeholders from 12 countries are participating in the meeting which is holding vigorous discussions on the above issues.
The presidents of all the five task forces of the Process will present the work progress and plan of their respective groups in the Senior Officials’ Meeting.
The meeting will also give the final shape to the Kathmandu Declaration on Labour Migration, which will be endorsed by the Ministerial Consultative Meeting taking place on Friday.
Senior officials as well as delegations from the Colombo Process member states are taking part in the meeting.
Nepal, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Thailand, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Phillippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam are the members of the Colombo Process.
Colombo Process is the common forum of labour supplying countries in the Asia region. It is a loose network set up with the goal of sharing best practices, learning and experiences regarding the foreign employment.
The main objective of the Colombo Process is to deliberate on the challenges of abroad employment and facilitating the labour-supplying countries and to propose practical practices for making the life of the migrant workers dignified.
Although the Colombo Process has prioritized collaboration on promoting the rights and interests of the migrant workers, protection of their facilities and services, exploring new destinations of foreign employment, promotion of the legal channel of remittance, development of managerial capacity of migration, data collection and inter-state foreign employment reform, this has not yet taken a concrete shape.