Formulating Strategies to Address Migration in South Asia Kathmandu, Nepal

EVAW/Gs & CBATN strongly feel that there is a need to diversify interventions in the areas of migration, with a focus to ensure safe migration not only across Indo-Nepal border but also for individuals migrating from India and Nepal to other countries including the Gulf, Europe, and other destinations. A quick assessment of policy implementation reveals that India is far behind in terms of implementing the international and national charters / protocols on safe migration and in general the government and civil society lack capacity in demystifying these charters and implementing those. On the other hand, the migrants themselves are not fully aware of their rights, which make them more susceptible to fraud, deception, and exploitation

PURPOSE OF THE WORKSHOP

Keeping the above background in context, the two day consultation with participation of network partners from Bangladesh, India, and Nepal was organised in Kathmandu, Nepal with a purpose to:

• Review of current regional and country level intervention on migration and migrant rights.
• Identify key areas for intervention at country and regional on migration and migrant rights.
• Draft a common strategy for the next 5 years to incorporate migration into EVAW/G and CBATN mandate.

CONCLUDING SESSION:

The participants were highly satisfied with the outputs generated from the workshop and considered this workshop to be a landmark in the history of CBATN, which is all set to change the course of the network. The participants strongly felt that CBATN should modify its agenda first to include migration within its framework and start prioritizing activities that can link safe migration and anti trafficking initiatives from the grass root level up to the advocacy levels. Some specific recommendations to CBATN secretariat include:

• Constitute a Task Force to coordinate and work on developing the ‘Status Report of cross border migration in South Asia’.
• Form a strong lobby group and ensure its presence at regional level.
• Form sub groups on Media and Training.
• Prepare a long term (5 year) strategy (including log frame) to support migration initiatives in South Asia as one of the outputs of this workshop.
• Bring participants from other countries, particularly Sri Lanka into the network.
• Develop a comprehensive fund raising and resource mobilizing plan for the strategy.
• Strengthen CBATN secretariat with more human and financial resources.
• Identify key donors for support.
• Build a corpus fund.

The workshop concluded with a strong commitment from all the participants to take forward the migration agenda within and beyond CBATN. The participants agreed to volunteer their time and resources and contribute to various agreed steps including drafting the framework of the status report, strengthening CBATN secretariat and cross sharing of information. It was also agreed that such meeting should again be convened in six months time to review the progress from this workshop and further strengthen the strategies.