By Aminul Islam Mirja
NEW DELHI, April 18, 2019 (BSS) – Bangladesh is highly confident about winning the election to the post of Deputy Director General of International Organisation for Migration (IOM) as several member states of the inter-governmental entity including India signaled their support.
“Indian foreign secretary and many envoys of IOM-members states based in New Delhi said they would positively consider Bangladesh’s candidature to the post of DDG of IOM,” Bangladesh Foreign secretary M. Shahidul Haque told BSS in the Indian capital.
Haque said he got a “positive wave” during his one-to-one talks with many envoys during a dinner last night in a Delhi hotel but added “since it is an election, so let me see what happens”.
Many IOM countries do not have their diplomatic missions in Dhaka and operate out of New Delhi to cover South Asia while Haque’s interacted with them as the IOM election is due to be held on June 21.
Bangladesh’s top foreign ministry bureaucrat arrived in Delhi on a three-day official visit had a meeting with his Indian counterpart V K Gokhale on Tuesday and talked individually with at least 20 envoys of IMO-members states on Tuesday when he sought their support in a bid to be elected to the post as the Dhaka’s nominee.
Haque, who is closely familiar to the IOM functions because of his professional links, said Bangladesh’s stood for safe and orderly migration.
He said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina wrote a letter to all of the 173 head of states of IOM countries earlier this month which was expected to have a positive impact on its election to the post.
Haque said it was Bangladesh which floated the idea of safe and orderly migration across the world at a time when there has been growing resistance to migrants in certain parts of the world.
He said Bangladesh was currently hosting over 11 lakh Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmar in the face of untold brutalities by Myanmar’s security forces in Rakhine.
Bangladesh’s handling of the Rohingya crisis has received international acclamation; he said adding that this fits in with the IOM’s commitment to the principle that humane and orderly migration benefits migrants and society.
Bangladesh is contesting with four other countries like Jordan, Afghanistan, Philippines and Sudan.
Dhaka, he said, however, feels “Shahidul has the right credential” to be elected to the IOM DDG because he has been associated with the IOM for eleven years and is considered among the four to five top experts in the world on the issue of international migration.
A Bangladesh Foreign Service officer from 1984 batch, Shaidul served the IOM on lien in different capacities for about 12 years.
He was director of the organisation for external relations, donors’ liaison and international migration policy for 2010-12 period and currently has been serving as an independent expert to the UN Committee on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families for two consecutive four-year terms 2014-17 and 2018-21.
He is also a member of the IOM Migration Advisory Board.
He was made Bangladesh foreign secretary in January 2013 and later promoted to Senior Secretary in 2018.