Bangladesh, UK sign SOPs on returns

Bangladesh and the United Kingdom have held their first-ever Joint Working Group meeting on Home Affairs in London at the British Home Office and signed Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) on Returns.

British Minister for Countering Illegal Migration James Tomlinson-Mynors KC and Bangladesh High Commissioner to the UK Saida Muna Tasneem opened the JWG meeting on Thursday and witnessed the signing of the SOPs between the two countries.

The Bangladesh-UK SOPs on Returns is a successor to the earlier signed Bangladesh-EU SOPs of 2017, the procedure that used to be followed before the UK’s exit from the EU for returning Bangladeshi overstayers from the UK, said a press release on Friday.

High Commissioner Saida Muna Tasneem recalled the genesis of the value-driven diplomatic relations between the two Commonwealth countries based on the historic friendship between Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the UK’s Conservative Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath.

Reaffirming Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s zero-tolerance stance on irregular migration, she said the Bangladesh High Commission in London in collaboration with the UK Home Office has been returning certain numbers of undocumented Bangladeshis for more than a decade.

"That is why the number of undocumented Bangladeshis in the UK is minimal at this moment, and the Bangladesh home office would work closely with the British Home Office with support from the High Commission. The good news is that Bangladesh is not even within the top ten countries in terms of numbers of undocumented Bangladeshis (migrants), and yet we needed to formalize this MoU with the post-Brexit UK.”

Apart from signing the SOPs, the Joint Working Group discussed opportunities for orderly migration including skilled and high-talent migration from Bangladesh to the UK, opened avenues for discussion on mutual legal assistance, extradition, transnational crimes and countering terrorism and extremism, as well as capacity building of Bangladesh’s law enforcement agencies.

The Joint Working Group meeting was led by Khairul Kabir Menon, additional secretary, Security Services Division, Ministry of Home Affairs from the Bangladesh side and Bas Javid, director general of Immigration Enforcement, Home Office from the UK side.

Senior representatives from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bangladesh Police and the Special Branch, as well as representatives from the Bangladesh High Commission in London participated in the meeting.