Global migration crisis and the Bangladesh experience

More than 1 million refugees have entered Europe by land and sea in 2015. The mass exodus of people from North Africa and Middle East have made the migrant crisis Europe's worst since World War II. While more than 80% of the migrants have arrived by sea routes, the fierce winter has not been able to slow down the daily influx, particularly in Greece. Europe has been struggling to deal with these large groups of helpless people, registering them as migrants and refugees, catering to their basic needs of shelter and food. In many stances, relocation of the migrants to share burden among the EU nations have failed due to resistance from both some of the EU countries as well as migrants who wanted to migrate to their country of choice. Hence, balancing the crisis has become a key challenge for Europe both socially and economically.

While there is ongoing debate on Europe's policy on refugee management, Bangladesh has experience and learnings from the successful refugee migration and repatriation in a number of cases.  During the liberation war in 1971, approximately 10 million refugees from Bangladesh fled to neighbouring India facing brutal aggression by the Pakistani military force. After the 9-month-long war ended, they were successfully repatriated back to their homeland. Bangladesh also has successfully managed the waves of Rohingya refugees who have fled from Myanmar at different stages in time. Despite resource constraints, Bangladesh has successfully repatriated majority of the refugees through mass repatriation and provided citizenship to many of them who chose to stay back. Even in the context of Biharis, a large portion of the minority chose to stay back after 1971; many of them in recent years have applied of citizenship and have been granted. Hence, the country has a strong record of success stories in dealing with migrant flow as both the source and destination country. These case studies could provide substantial learning evidence for bothpragmatic policy resolution as well as effective means to deal with the migrant crisis facing Europe. (Courtesy of The Daily Star)