DHAKA, May 17, 2024 (BSS) - Bangladesh and the United Kingdom (UK) held their
first ever Joint Working Group meeting on Home Affairs on Thursday in London
at the British Home Office and signed the Standard Operating Procedures
(SOPs) on Returns.

British Minister for Countering Illegal Migration James Tomlinson-Mynors KC,
and Bangladesh High Commissioner in London Saida Muna Tasneem opened the JWG
meeting and witnessed the signing of the SOPs between the two countries,
according to a message received here today.

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
UK's exit from the EU for returning Bangladeshi overstayers from the UK.

Bangladesh envoy Tasneem in her opening statement recalled the genesis of the
value-driven diplomatic relations between the two Commonwealth countries
based on the historic friendship between Father of the Nation Bangabandhu
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and UK's Conservative Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath.

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

She said 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 nationals in the UK, and yet we needed to
formalize this MoU with the post-Brexit UK," the envoy said.

Apart from signing of the SOPs, the Joint Working Group on Home Affairs
discussed opportunities of 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.

Bangladesh home ministry's additional secretary Khairul Kabir Menon and
Director General of the UK's Immigration Enforcement, Home office Bas Javid
led their respective sides.

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