News Excerpt:
India has become chair of the regional grouping Colombo Process for the first time for 2024-26.
About the Colombo Process:
- It is also known as the Regional Consultative Process on the Management of Overseas Employment and Contractual Labour for Countries of Origin in Asia.
- The inaugural meeting of the Colombo Process (CP) took place in 2003 in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
- It brings together South and Southeast Asian labor-sending countries in a member-state-driven, non-binding consultative process on migration to facilitate dialogue and cooperation on issues of common interest and concerns relating to labor mobility.
- The International Organization for Migration (IOM), has acted as the Secretariat of CP since its inception.
- There are currently 12 Member States: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.
- India has been a member of the Colombo Process since its inception in 2003.
Objectives
- Share experiences, lessons learned, and best practices in labor migration management.
- Consult on issues faced by migrants, countries of origin, and countries of destination, and propose practical solutions for the well-being of overseas workers.
- Optimize development benefits from organized overseas employment and enhance dialogues with countries of destination.
- Review and monitor the implementation of the recommendations and identify further steps of action.
Structure and Process
- The regional consultative process of migrant worker origin countries from South and SE Asia. It serves as a forum for the exchange of best practices on overseas employment.
- It also offers an informal and non-binding environment for Member States, observers, and external organizations to engage in dialogues and cooperate on issues related to labor migration.
- The Process is coordinated through Permanent Missions of Member States at the UN in Geneva.
- It creates an opportunity for countries of origin of migrant workers to engage in collective bargaining to push for their interests.
- The CP meetings are generally conducted in two parts – the Senior Officials’ Meeting and the Ministerial Consultations.
- It is the duty of the participating Senior Officials to ensure that the outcome documents are finalized and ready for adoption by the Ministers and Heads of Delegations at the Ministerial Consultations.
What was the necessity to form such a platform?
- According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), some three million Asian workers leave their countries each year to work overseas.
- A large proportion of these workers (from South and Southeast Asia) head to the Gulf countries while some others move to North America, Europe, and other Asian countries.
- India is a key labour-sending country to countries, particularly in the Gulf.
- As Asian overseas worker populations grow in numbers and diversify in terms of destination and source countries, their impact is increasingly felt regionally and internationally.
- Countries of origin through this initiative affirmed that greater efforts are needed to improve regional response to the challenges of labor mobility and to optimize the benefits of organized labor mobility.
What about the labor-receiving countries?
- Abu Dhabi Dialogue (ADD) is a regional, voluntary, and non-binding consultative process.
- India has been a member of the ADD since 2008.
- It consists of the 12 member states of the Colombo Process and six Gulf countries of destination: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Malaysia.
- It was established in 2008 as a forum for dialogue and cooperation between Asian countries of labour origin and destination to facilitate regional cooperation on contractual labour mobility, sharing of best experiences, and learning from one another's experiences.
