Clicky
National, Front Page

Closing borders to stop migration is not solution: Shahriar


Bangladeshpost
Published : 05 May 2019 09:22 PM | Updated : 04 Sep 2020 03:12 AM

State minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam Sunday said closing the borders to stop the flow of immigrants is not the solution or safeguard to uphold sovereign authority of countries, reports BSS. “We need to be more rational and less emotional while dealing with international migration,” he said in his opening remarks at the ‘Regional Consultation of the Global Compact for Migration (GCM)’ in Dhaka.

He also called for taking into account issues like climate change, identity politics, national populist measures, and rapid technological progress. “Bangladesh painfully recognizes that cross-border forced displacement caused by violence, extremism and ultra-nationalism compounds the task ahead of us,” he said.
Mentioning that since August 2017, around 1.1 million Rohingya people from Northern Rakhine State of Myanmar have sought refuse in Bangladesh, Shahriar said Dhaka has engaged its fullest strength to cope with the humanitarian needs on the ground despite resource scarcity.

Besides providing all possible humanitarian support to Rohoingys, Bangladesh bilaterally engaged with Myanmar to solve the problem, he said. The state minister thanked the UN Secretary General for appointing the Permanent Representatives of Bangladesh and Spain as co-facilitators to the intergovernmental consultations and negotiations to determine the modalities and organizational aspects of the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF).

He hoped that the co-facilitators would be able to come up with concrete way outs for the implementation of 23 objectives outlined in the GCM. State Minister for Expatriate’s Welfare and Overseas Employment Imran Ahmad and Permanent Representative of Spain to the United Nations Agust-n Santos Maraver also spoke among others.