Senior officials representing member government of the ADD at a meeting in Dubai agreed to Sri Lanka’s proposal to host a meeting of senior officials and the fourth ministerial consultation in Colombo in January 2017. Sri Lanka was unanimously elected to be the next Chair-in-Office of the 17-member “ABU DHABI DIALOGUE” (ADD) among Asian countries of labour origin and destination this year.

The ministers responsible for foreign Employment of the ADD countries will attend the Colombo meeting.Kuwait as the current Chair-in-Office of the ADD. The ADD which brings together Asian Labour sending and receiving countries, seek to boost protection and improve conditions of employment for millions of foreign workers in the Gulf in its Kuwait declaration of November 2014 noted that recognizing that individual government’s efforts may fall short, we resolve to work together to prevent and sanction exploitative recruitment practices that place workers at great risk and undermine fundamental rights.

The upcoming 4th ministerial consultation in Colombo will focus on bilateral and multilateral cooperation in cooperating challenges that are associated with labour recruitment and consider alternatives to the prevalent recruitment models as a main item of the consultation’s agenda.

Established 2008, the Abu Dhabi Dialogue launched a collaborative approach to address development in temporary labour mobility in Asia. It was initiated to broaden the base for common understanding of issues and to influence practices and policies in the area of contractual labor for the region.