Strengthening Migration Management Capacities in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka: Targeted Preparatory Actions

This project seeded the start up of related activities in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in the following areas: 1) strengthening government capacity to design labour migration policy and operational activities; 2) strengthening capacity of NGOs in Bangladesh to participate in support actions to labour émigrés; 3) strengthening government capacity to design programmes to more fully engage diaspora in local development; and, 4) strengthening ability of the government to combat fraud in migration, including trafficking of human beings. The project resulted in the development and pilot testing of training modules for labour migrants (with key NGOs), creation of specific plans and piloting of initial interventions for strengthening selected government bureaus in the area of IT systems for migration management, and development and piloting of training modules for government officials involved in migration fraud detection. In Sri Lanka the actions were intended to support the process of government planning towards a POA for implementation of recommendations of the High Level Working Group. All interventions were intended to form a basis for subsequent development of comprehensive and long-term projects for capacity building and migrant service delivery.