ISLAMABAD:Pakistan will be next chair of Abu Dhabi Dialogue (ADD) for a two-year term, starting later this year, former Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development Sayed Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari said on Monday.
“This honour comes for the first time since dialogue’s inception in 2008 from among 18 nations,” he said in a tweet while describing it a ‘huge recognition’ of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s work for overseas labour rights.
He said the initiative would help Pakistan at the global stage in creating a better ecosystem for labour rights, empowering workers, and ensuring protection of their rights and skills up-gradation.
Zulfikar Bukhari extended gratitude to the ADD and its member states for honoring Pakistan with its chairmanship and expressed the hope that Pakistan would chair the forum with ‘fruitful insight’.
The ADD was established in 2008 for dialogue and cooperation between Asian countries of labour origin and destination.
The inter-governmental forum consists of 12 member states of the Colombo Process including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam, and six Gulf countries of destination: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as Malaysia.
Regular observers include the International Organization for Migration, International Labour Organization, private sector and civil society representatives. The permanent secretariat is provided by the UAE, and the current chair-in-office is Sri Lanka.
As a state-led Regional Consultative Process, the ADD aims to enable safe, orderly and regular labour migration in some of the world’s largest temporary labour migration corridors.
Through multi-lateral dialogue and cooperation on the joint development of labour mobility-related programming, implementation, and reporting, the ADD helps to ensure that member states develop partnerships for adopting best practices, and are in a position to learn from the experience of each others.
Civil society has been invited to contribute to the dialogue and in recent years to partner in realization of some of the programme areas.