News

As earlier announced, the 5th Meeting of the Budapest Process Working Group on the Silk Routes Region will be held in Dushanbe, Tajikistan on 11 - 12 November 2014. The meeting will deal with the first priority area of the Silk Routes Partnership Ministerial Declaration namely Migration and Mobility, more specifically labour migration and protection of migrant workers.

Invitees can register to the homepage here or can login here with their existing credentials. Once you are logged onto the homepage you will be immediately directed to the event registration page for this meeting.

 
Antalya, 1-3 September 2014: The first regional training in the framework of the project “Support to the Silk Routes Partnership for Migration under the Budapest Process” aimed at strengthening national frameworks and processes for migration policy development as well the inter-agency approach in generating, analysing and managing migration data. The meeting took place on 1-3 September 2014 in Antalya, Turkey and gathered 21 senior officials from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Iran as an observer country.

The 4th meeting of the Budapest Process Working Group on the Black Sea Region has been postponed. Originally planned to take place in Sofia, Bulgaria on 11 – 12 September 2014, the meeting has been postponed to allow for early parliamentary elections in Bulgaria in early October. The meeting will be re-scheduled for early 2015.

On a related note, activities to strengthen cooperation and technical capacity across the Silk Routes region are due to recommence in earnest in September 2014. Following the project inception phase, activities under the Silk Routes Partnership Project will begin with the 1st Regional Training on Migration Policy and Data Management, in Antalya, Turkey on 1 – 3 September.  The training plans to bring together representatives from across the Silk Routes region with EU experts on data management and migration policy with the objective of strengthening national frameworks and processes for migration policy development as well the inter-agency approach in generating, analysing and managing migration data. 

Budapest, 2-3 June 2014: Hungary, as the lead partner of the project ‛Support to the Silk Routes Partnership for Migration under the Budapest Process’, hosted the kick-off conference for the project from 2 to 3 June at the Ministry of Interior in Budapest. The three-year flagship project under the Budapest Process umbrella is funded by the European Union, co-funded by Bulgaria, Hungary, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey, and implemented by ICMPD.

With the adoption of the Istanbul Ministerial Declaration, the UK funded project Bridging Measures for Migration Management in the Silk Routes Region initiated the first steps towards its concrete implementation. Following a set of visits to all three countries to further concretise priorities and needs in the area of migration, the first pilot activities were implemented for Afghanistan (December 2013), Pakistan (January 2014) and Iraq (February 2014).

Migration Country Reports for Afghanistan and Pakistan are now available online from the Budapest Process website and i-Map Interactive Map on Migration. The Country Reports were prepared within the project "Fostering Cooperation in the Area of Migration with and in the Silk Routes Region”, implemented under the umbrella of the Budapest Process between September 2011 and November 2013. The reports aim at establishing a comprehensive knowledge base on the migration realities in Afghanistan and Pakistan to aid stakeholders understand the complex phenomenon of migration in these contexts, and its links to other policy areas at a national, regional and international level.

The implementation of the Silk Routes Partnership has been the main focus of the Budapest Process in the second half of 2013. In this context, the UK initiated the first follow up project (Bridging Measures) and organised a donor coordination meeting in July where key partners came together to discuss future cooperation frameworks in the Silk Routes Region.

Islamabad, 28-29 October 2013: The 4th Silk Routes Working Group Meeting is to be held jointly with the final intergovernmental conference of the Silk Routes I project. The meeting will take place at the end of October in Islamabad, Pakistan and will be the first meeting of Budapest Process participating countries since the establishment of A Silk Routes Partnership for Migration on 19 April 2013 in Istanbul, Turkey.

Since the establishment of “A Silk Routes Partnership for Migration” on 19 April 2013 at the 5th Budapest Process Ministerial Conference in Istanbul, ICMPD, as the Budapest Process Secretariat, has been supporting participating countries in developing concrete follow-up actions to implement the Istanbul Ministerial Declaration.

Istanbul, 19 April 2013: The Istanbul Ministerial Declaration on a Silk Routes Partnership for Migration was adopted by the participating countries of the Budapest Process at the 5th Budapest Process Ministerial Conference on Friday, 19 April in Istanbul, Turkey. In addition to launching the declaration, the conference marked the 20th anniversary of the Budapest Process.