The government is preparing a draft code of conduct for recruiting agencies to ensure safe migration in line with the international rules, foreign minister Dr AK Abdul Momen said.
He made the disclosure at the Policy Forum on 'Road to Implementing Global Compact on Migration, or GCM."
He was addressing a panel discussion of the Forum held at the Sheraton Quito, Ecuador on Tuesday, according to a foreign office statement received on Wednesday.
The foreign minister said Bangladesh is pledge-bound to provide safety and security to every native and foreign citizen in Bangladesh.
Even hundreds of thousands foreign nationals, who are working in Bangladesh in various industrial units, are serving in a peaceful environment.
The establishment of safe, orderly and regular migration is a political priority of the government, he added.
"With more than 1.1 million Rohingya at hand, we understand very well the mayhem if such unsafe, disorderly and irregular movement of people takes place anywhere," he said.
"Bangladesh does not consider migration just as another international issue," he said.
The country considers migration an integral path to development both for the host and the country of origin, the minister said.
Dr Momen said the government has placed highest importance on the process of migration and Bangladesh has recently been a source, transit and destination country for migration.
"So we have taken all necessary preparations so that our citizens and the whole society can be better equipped to take the advantage of the global understanding through the compact," he added.
"Immediately after the adoption, we had started having stakeholders' dialogue with variable geometry approach. Though we have a fairly good database at the BMET (Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training), we are still working on the development of more comprehensive database as per the GCM objective," he noted.
Highlighting the various steps taken to comply with the compact, the minister said as part of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) data gap analysis, Bangladesh has covered the SDG 10.7 and Colombo Process, which is one of the compact objectives.
To combat trafficking, projects under the Bali Process to address it has been undertaken according to GCM objective 10.
The welfare and legal support to victims of abuse provided both at home and abroad through NGOs and government safe homes fulfilling the GCM objective 14, the minister said.
In this connection, he noted that CSO advocacy on migrants in government social protection programmes was ongoing as per GCM Objective 21 and Wage Earners' Welfare Board of Bangladesh has also adopted the mandate of GCM objective 21.
"We were one of the two facilitators to negotiate the modalities of the International Migration Review Forum," Dr Momen said.
The first UN Migration Network has been established in Bangladesh, he added.
The government is taking measures and plans to mainstream migration in the 8th Five Year Plan being drawn up, said the minister.
A GCM Implementation Framework has been developed and is under the review of the government, he added.
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