Kunal Kulkarni, Senior Researcher, Gateway House attended a conference hosted under the auspices of Consortium of South Asian Think Tanks in Colombo Sri Lanka on 25-26 August 2016. The theme of the conference was ‘Migration and IDPs in South Asia’ and was jointly organized by Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS) in cooperation with the Centre for South Asian Studies (CSAS) and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS).
On 25 August, the keynote session began with Hon. Swaminathan MP, Minister of Prison Reforms, Rehabilitation, Resettlement of The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka speaking on the post-conflict rehabilitation work carried on by the government of Sri Lanka. This was followed by two panel sessions on ‘Examining Migration Dynamics: Push and Pull Factors in South Asia’ and ‘IDPs in the Region, Forcible Displacement and Effects on Society’. As a panelist in the third session, Kunal spoke on Migration in Mumbai and the legal framework.
On 26 August, the session on ‘IDPs in the Region, Forcible Displacement and Effects on Society’ took place followed by the closing session. There over 15 speakers from South Asian countries including India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Maldives and also from Germany.
Read Kunal’s speech entitled ‘How Mumbai became a magnet for migrants’ here.