 that are there in the respective countries for the enfranchisement of migrants, lasting about 40, 50 minutes to be followed by my conclusion that including remarks that I will be making, try to summarize the main, the key findings and recommendation stemming from the discussion. And a closing that, then the round table will be closing that also I will highlight briefly what next steps following this round table we will be undertaking. So who you are muted? Shahinda said she followed the link that Jennifer first sent and she didn't get, she was in and out. Now I sent her the link that I have, is she in now? Yes, thank you so much. With your name, I'll go over to you. Maybe I start then. Okay. Yeah, well, on behalf of International Idea, I won't welcome to this round table webinar. And while our speakers and moderator joining from different parts of Asia and beyond, we are organizing this webinar from Canberra, Australia. So before anything else, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land where International Idea's regional office is located, numbering vulnerable people and in where I currently live and work from and pay my respects to the elders, past, present, and emerging. Australian indigenous peoples represent oldest living culture in the world. India received voting rights only in 1962. In today's world, as we know 2022, universal adult suffrage citizens right to vote is almost universal, at least on paper and at times only on paper. In practice, many groups, individuals find it hard if not impossible to exercise their right to vote. So absent voters and absent voters of South Asia is a topic that we at Idea have been thinking and discussing for some time now. And so I will very briefly say a few words about why this topic and what we have done so far and maybe also how to envisage to move forward. Our interest on this topic grew out of realization that the voter turnout and voter registration data, we're not really telling the whole story, that those figures, they're also hiding a lot of people and that the significant group of amongst those absent voters, the internal and out of country migrants. Particularly seasonal or temporary migrants who have left their country or they origin, place of origin for the work with an idea of returning rather than immigrating permanently. So with the continued ties and relations to the countries. And reaching these people is not really a question of voter education as they are indeed major voter education efforts in almost all the countries we studied. For example, India has increased its voter turnout by 10% over the last three electoral cycles from 52.8 of 2009 to 68.8 in 2019. This is a remarkable increase. And of course reasons for this many fold and also related to and partly party political, but the intense voter education by the efforts by the election commission of India has certainly paid off. And yet when you look closer, still millions of people absent from the elections and increase of voter education would not help. It is the very legal framework with that would need to be amended and voting infrastructure built around. One of the very few silver linings of this pandemic has been a renewed attention onto electoral reforms. And in order to organize a safe pandemic era elections, countries all over the world needed to put in place what we call a special voting arrangements or SBAs, including extended voting days, home voting, mobile and proxy voting, hospital voting and so on. And there's a very interesting global database on special voting arrangements at the international idea website. I can highly recommend that to anyone interested in the topic, learn what has been done late. And these are all arrangements that migrants, both internal and external migrants can benefit from or could have benefit since long, but in the absence of the legal frameworks, infrastructure and at times political will, they haven't realized. So we think there is a momentum for this topic and this research, advocacy and action around it. And there is this reckoning that perhaps there is this reckoning that instead of bringing people to the ballot box, we must bring the ballot people. And as a first step, we wanted to take a stock of the current situation, policies and prospects for entrancing migrant workers. And the first region of focus being South Asia. And we were very fortunate to be able to gather this group of researchers from South Asia that we have. So my sincere thanks to all of you being with us here today. As a next step and also subject to results of today's and subsequent roundtables, we will finalize the report, including a set of hopefully very concrete policy recommendations. And then in a couple of countries, together with organizations on the ground, we aim to do organized national dialogues and talk with those who decide, political leaders, policy makers, so that the absent voters would no longer be absent part of the elections and democratic processes. If they so close to. But today, we wish to hear from the case study orders. How do they see not only the current challenges, but also what are the prospects? Has the pandemic inspired any thinking outside of what the champions, if any, when it comes to political rights of the migrants? Please have some of the questions that Sakun Dela-Garugama, our moderator, is going to pose to the panelists and also additional questions to welcome to the Q&A function, I believe. And Dr. Karikama is a former UN official, former head of the RISRILANKA and currently executive director of law and something I can't remember now, your organization's name, Sakun Dela, but most importantly, former international idea head of South Asia program. And she herself knows a thing or two about migrating from one place to another about dealing with citizenship and related rights. And she together with Antonio Spinelli, who is managing this project from idea, our team will be pulling findings and conclusions together. So once again, welcome everyone and over to you. Thank you very much, Lena. And let me first put a timer on to remind me. First, I would like to thank international idea for inviting me to facilitate this dialogue. And I would also like to thank the panelists. I really enjoyed reading your papers and learning a lot from your gains as well as your challenges. The absent voters of South Asia, the electoral inclusion of migrant voters, that's the focus of our discussion today. But I think many of us realize that they are not only absent from electoral registers, but they've often been absent from our consciousness, certainly absent from the radar screen of our policymakers and our lawmakers. Despite the fact that they draw their national budgets on the basis of the remittances of migrant workers. So I think we've come to recognize, and as Lena said, the pandemic brought it off or all too starkly how vulnerable they were. And post pandemic or in the throes of the pandemic, we recognize how much we want migrant workers to go back and work wherever they're working because we are depending on their revenues. So if any, this is a very timely moment to bring this to our attention. The migrant phenomenon is linked very much to the histories of South Asia, the politics, the geographies of our region. It is challenged by our development models that depend on migrant workers, as I said. And yet we are honest to believe that migrant work is a temporary phenomenon when it is not. Our democratic institutions and processes are based on living and voting in constituencies and a settled basis of social, political and economic life, which actually does not exist for many and certainly does not exist in South Asia. The right to vote is an inalienable democratic right for each of our citizens, but we don't meet those standards in case of the migrant workers. The number of migrants are so great and their contributions to their families, their communities and the national budget is so great. The risks they take and the vulnerabilities they face are so great, leaving them in political limbo and making them politically invisible and therefore unable to access basic rights is really unconscionable. Without the vote, they are without defenders in the political arena. This indicates that our respective democracies contain systemic flaws, structural exclusion, and our political imaginations have failed in addressing this reality and in determining ways of including them into the electorate. Our lack of political imagination may be influenced by our histories because the democratic institutions we have received through our colonial experiences have also determined a certain kind of electoral representation. But South Asia, which is characterized by absent flows of populations, invasions, nomadic movements, porous borders where people move freely across mountains, plains, crossing rivers and oceans, we have to come to terms with this reality. During the colonial era too, there was a movement within empires. People moved within boundaries of empires, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes by force or they were moved by colonial authorities to work in labor plantations, et cetera. Post-colonial 20th century states were defined in very formalistic ways and citizenship within the nation state became a defining marker. Citizenship became the marker of who could stay, who could go and if non-citizens stayed, how long they could stay and on what terms. Democracy, which recognized the right to vote, participate in government and the entitlements that are provided by the state also contributed to these definitions and entitlements. So we tend to focus on participation, representation as defining elements of democracy, but I think we should focus more on the concepts of inclusion and the principles that frame that inclusion because they are more significant. The right to participation and representation will flow from that understanding of inclusion. But if inclusion is restricted and the right to vote is defined about who or should not be included, the laws and procedures defining access will follow from that. Historically, women, people with our property could not vote, people of color. In South Asia too, we had restrictive use of inclusion which left large numbers of people and whole communities in limbo. I wanted this time to acknowledge the plantation workers in Sri Lanka, the Bengalis in Pakistan, the Biharis in Bangladesh, and the Indians and Tibetans in Nepal, Nepalis in Bhutan, et cetera. And again today, the whole voting issue in Assam shows us that these issues are still alive and well. South Asia is tied by bonds of culture, religion, ethnicity, but notwithstanding this and our protestations of brotherly love, we have done a lot to exclude each other from our understanding of who is a national and who is not. For multi-ethnic and multi-religious patriarchal, socially stratified South Asia with its unique distinctive regional features, democracy was a game changer. South Asia adapted to democracy and ensured subtly that democracy would adapt to South Asia. In a seminal study undertaken by International Idea in 2008, it was noted that there is no single South Asian meaning of democracy. Each country, region, and group share a different conception of what democracy means and it's determined by their own culture, their own colonial history or the national histories and their present day politics. But democracy provided the platform from which radical promises of transformation were met and made. These radical promises include equality, equal protection, universal franchise, and the protection of fundamental rights. However, these radical promises have not translated into institutions and processes that deliver on them. And I will come back to this to understand what this has meant to enfranchisement as well as political rights of minorities and marginalized communities. India stands out, or I should say it stood out, as an example of a successful democratic accommodation of minority and vulnerable community needs and demands. In the 2008 study, India comes out as a champion for bringing linguistic politics, constitutional provisions, affirmative action for castes. All this was possible because people were actively engaged in the electoral process. As voters, they could make systemic demands. So voting is key and voting through periodic elections is key to representation. It is key to holding governments accountable and also to ensuring one's own needs, economic needs, livelihood needs, social and economic aspirations. All this is really addressed through the ability to vote and make a difference. So in this case, I want to point out that in recent parliamentary elections, the voter turnout in South Asia has been very high. In Bangladesh, it was 80% in Sri Lanka, it's 79.5%. More, this is 75.5%. Bhutan, 71%, Nepal, 68.7%. India, 67.4%. Pakistan and Afghanistan are coming up with 50.1% in Pakistan and Afghanistan, 45.2%. Not all South Asian countries have presidential systems and enthusiasm for voting for presidents also varies. But there too, certain countries like Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bangladesh are fairly high rates of voting, less so about Afghanistan. So voting matters to South Asians. And so this gap of excluding absent voters is extremely disheartening. Reading the papers from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Pakistan and Sri Lanka, I recognize some differences as well as similarities. And I'm sure the paper writers will elaborate on this more. But if I had to give a regional overview of migration in South Asia and also voting, we would recognize that in South Asia, all these countries depend on their, their economies depend on remittances. A few countries have put into place some mechanisms for their protection in host countries. For example, I think Nepal and Bangladesh have labor caches in embassies. They're not large in number, but still it's a recognition that they have this protection. And some countries recognize the typologies of migration and try to address that through various mechanisms as well. For example, there is an understanding that there's a conception that all migrant workers are poor, low skilled and marginalized. In fact, there are very high end wage earners, especially from India and even Sri Lanka who go in as professionals in different countries. They may or may not return or they may be long-term migrants. And nevertheless, they have also gone with different skills and so therefore can access a political or electoral system in a different way. Pakistan has also, I think, provided voting or considered voting rights for dual citizens and they are in a conundrum because many people within the country feel that dual citizens should not have a right to vote because they may determine outcomes. They are not really permanent stakeholders in the country and therefore is that a problem? So migrant voting, people also raise a lot of the challenges before they even consider solutions for this, but it's a real fear of issue amongst migrant workers and the election management systems. There is a real fear or it's an express fear about the cost of including migrant waters in electoral roles and establishing polling stations in third countries. Some of the issues that they have raised is the security of the vote, the cost of the vote, the fear of the outcomes because it is more unpredictable that perhaps can't be addressed through opinion polls, et cetera. There are also the concerns about the security of physical voting in third countries as well as postal votes and internet voting. So these are some of the issues raised as to why migrant voting has not been made a reality. For a host country to put in place a protective mechanism to make accommodation to conduct polls in their country again, it requires perhaps bilateral agreements with the migrant sending country and the host country and therefore these have been raised as internal complications. However, even if this is the problem with out of country voters, certainly there's no excuse for internal migrants not being accommodated. And even that does not happen. For example, internal registration of voting and voting on site, these are all issues that have been raised as to why internal migrants could not be accommodated. But I think in the 21st century and with over 70 years of the franchise in these countries solutions could perhaps be creatively thought of. So I conclude with two points stating that absentee voters will remain absent and the state searches for them and brings them into the fold. And so this means lenses of inclusion. And migrant voters will continue to fall through the cracks unless the state puts its lenders on of inclusion on and also walks in their shoes. What does it take to bring them into the fold rather than looking at the obstacles focusing on the cannot instead of the why not? So this is my brief overview and I give it over now to the panelists to make their presentation. I'm afraid I have gone over my time but I hope you will be more economical. And so when I introduce the panelists I think you have all been given the questions to answer. So perhaps I don't need to repeat the questions or we can put them on the chat to Antonio to save time to focus the attention of the panelists as well as the participants. But to the panelists, may I introduce them in the alphabetical order of the countries that they represent or the case studies that they write on. And the first will be Bashir Mubasha from Afghanistan. He's a post-doctoral fellow in the American University. Ashraful Azad from Bangladesh who's recently received his PhD from the Faculty of Law and Justice University of New South Wales, Australia. And Seoxian Peck of Bhutan who is the founder and advisor to the Bhutan Center for Media and Democracy in Bhutan. Regrettably, Barasmi Tambora who's a research associate of the Indian Institute of Electrical Management was not able to participate but she was actually really contributing to this process. Shahinda Ismail of the Maldives. She's an executive director of the Maldivian Democracy Network. Gopal Sivakoti of Nepal, an expert advisor for National Election Observation Committee in Nepal. Ali Imran from Pakistan. Ali is the next senior expert of the Club Dimitri and Pakya Sobhi Saravan Muslu executive director of the Center for Policy Alternative Sri Lanka. So over to you, Bashir. And congratulations for having faith and hope and confidence in democracy and voting. So we are very interested in sharing of your experiences in Afghanistan. Sure, hello. Can I get to share the slides? I don't have the option right now. You have to insert your slides in and share screen, I think, right? Yeah, yeah, but it's a size host disabled participant screen share. Green button? It's okay. Yeah, I cannot share the slides, but... Jenny, can you let everybody share screen? Just for a moment. All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and start and talk a little bit about it because we don't have a lot of time. So I guess I have five minutes, so I'll make sure I will try to say whatever is possible in this five minutes. So about Afghanistan, well, the situation is pretty bleak. There's a lot of questions about the fate of democracy in the country, about the Taliban, about the migrants and about, you know, whether there is gonna be any elections held in the country or not. So far, the Taliban have suggested that they are not gonna hold elections. They think democracy is a concept came from, is a colonial imposition of a political regime on Afghanistan. So they do don't want to hold elections. And so the situation is not good on that front. So right now, I guess we were talking about the wooden rights of the migrants and the displaced population internally and externally between 2001 and 2021. And between these periods, basically Afghanistan held around seven to eight elections, presidential election of 2004, parliamentary election of 2005, presidential election of 2009 and then parliamentary election of 2010. And then presidential election of 2014 and a runoff of 2014. And then two other elections we had in 2018 and 2019 for the presidential elections. So those were the last elections with a lot of fraud, irregularities and a lot of issues. And in all these seven to eight elections, the only elections in which the displaced population, especially the outmigrants, were able to participate and vote was the first election of Afghanistan, which was the presidential election of 2004, which was basically run and managed by the United Nations through a program, UNOMA, and the Afghan refugees only in Pakistan and Iran were able to participate in the elections and not the migrants in other countries. Around 8,500, sorry, in 5,000 refugees were able to, 850,000 migrants were able to vote in Iran and Pakistan during those times, but that was only a time that they were able to vote. Although there has been attempts by the international community and by the Afghan governments to basically pave the ground for the Afghan migrants across overseas to be able to participate in elections, unfortunately they have not been able to do so for a number of reasons. So basically the three reasons that the Afghan government and the electoral commissions have provided were the first reason was that the government needed to prepare a huge scale of logistics and financial resources for this project to happen. And by the estimations that the electoral commission has provided, at least $50 million was needed for the elections to be held only in Pakistan and Iran who have the largest number of Afghan refugees to hold elections in those countries for the Afghan refugees to participate in the process. And the Afghan government was not able to provide that amount of money and the international community was not willing to contribute in that process so that was one of the reasons they were not able to do it. And the second reason that the electoral commission provided for not being able to pave the ground for the Afghan migrants to participate in the electoral process was that they were not sure that the hosting countries were cooperative enough in terms of for example, providing documents let's say for a large number of irregular immigrants and for example, holding elections and having polling stations in the countries for the Afghan migrants. And the third reason was more kind of political in a sense that they were afraid that there might be too much electoral fraud happening and that the influence of foreign countries and the spacious criticisms were about the influence and interference of Iran and Pakistan where you go to the elections in Afghanistan but that was the political reason that the government of Afghanistan has offered. So basically on the papers you could argue that the Afghan immigrants and the displaced populations had the right to vote because Afghanistan was a party to several international conventions and treaties for example, international convention and several political rights, international convention on social, economic and cultural rights for example international convention on all forms of elimination of all forms of racial discrimination and international convention on elimination of discrimination against women. So several international conventions that basically respected and protected the rights of citizens and suggested that the states and required that the states must respect the rights of their citizens and that would include their freedom of movement as well as their political rights and civil rights including the right to vote. And Afghanistan has been party to those international treaties Afghanistan also had a number of laws. So for example, the citizenship law that stated that the citizens of Afghanistan who migrate to other countries do not lose their citizenship neither do their children lose their citizenship. So based on that principle and a number of articles in the constitution of the country which suggested that all citizens are equal and they have the right to vote and to nominate themselves basically all citizens had the right to vote at least on the paper based on the laws of the country. And the election law of the country also have provided a number of protections. So for example, in case of Afghanistan we are talking about three groups of people the out migrants, people who have migrated to different other countries and the internally displaced population which is a large population in Afghanistan around in 2001 at least by one report 5 million people have in displaced internally in Afghanistan. And in 2015, a report has suggested that around 5 million people have migrated to other countries and since 2015, there has been a huge number of migrations out migrations from Afghanistan to different other countries. So for example, in the United States along around 97,000 people have migrated since 2001 to 2021 and only after August of 2015 around like 76,000 people have been evacuated only to the U.S. And around 600,000 people have basically migrated outside of Afghanistan or displaced since the August but we are talking about... One more minute. One minute, all right. Okay, so I'm gonna make sure I'm gonna end this session in one minute. All right, so based on the national laws of Afghanistan the migrants and the displaced populations have had the rights to vote and to participate and to have representations but unfortunately in practice as I suggested the only election in which they were able to participate was the presidential election of 2004 the internal displaced population have been some haven't been able to vote others have not been able to vote for different reasons. So for example, the issue of languages. So for example, minorities who did not speak in Persian who did not speak in Pashto well, did not have access to for example, to all those campaign materials about their participation in the electoral process that were for example only in these two formal languages of the country. And many people who were internally displaced they basically have lost their identity cards and identity cards were very important for their registration as voters. And in some cases the laws basically required them to go back to the place to their place of origin and not to register and get their identity cards but the problem was that the people have been displaced because they could no longer actually go back to their place of origin so how they could go back and get their identity cards or register for the elections. So in practice unfortunately they have not been able to vote but there have been especially Afghan immigrants abroad who were able to run as presidential candidates and parliamentary candidates. For example, President Ghani and President Kazek have been both migrants who have lived abroad. For example, President Ghani has been abroad for 30 years and then he was able to become the president of the country in parliamentary elections as well. A large number of people have been able to come back to Afghanistan and run as candidates and able to win seats but there has been a little bit of problem there. I don't know how much time I have and whether I can speak about it or not continue. Okay, I'm gonna end that in a couple of sentences was that the electoral system which we had for the parliamentary election was the S&TB system which basically in a way incentivized winning of an election through patronage and money rather than through principles, election ideologies and political parties. That has been one of the reasons that people who have been rich and who have been abroad were able to come back to remittances and patronage they were able to get seats but the problem was they were neither representing truly the local population or the Afghan migrants abroad. So I'm gonna end there. Thank you. Thank you very much. Antonio, will it be you or me calling on the speakers? Would you mute it? Okay, can we ask Ashraful Azad to speak about Bangladesh case study? Thank you very much, Basu. Thank you so much. I'll try to finish in five minutes of the time. So Bangladesh is a major country of origin for the national migrants as well as there's a large group of internal migrants in the country. There are close to 10 million Bangladeshi migrants living overseas, mainly in the Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and in South East Asia, mainly Malaysia and Singapore and in some Western countries. So in papers, these migrants are allowed to vote in elections but in practice they have not been able to do so. So under Bangladesh there is an act called a representation of the people order in 1972. Overseas migrants are allowed to vote but there was no procedural provision in the law. There was an amendment in 2013 which actually created some provisions for the migrants to vote and the only way they allowed to vote is called postal ballot. So the migrants living overseas and internal eligible migrants can vote through postal ballots. So this provision allowed the migrants to vote but at the same time, this is the main barrier. The process is the main barrier for vote in a feasible way. Let me explain in a minute. So this postal ballot that requires international sending an international postage like three times during the process. So once the election candidates are finalized election symbols are assigned and then which is like less than one month from the election. So the migrants can apply to the district returning officer in their home constituency for a postal ballot. And then the returning officer will send them back postal ballot to their overseas address. After receiving the postal ballot, the migrants have to mark their vote, go to a post office, get a rubber stand on the envelope and send them back to the returning officer. They have to do everything in less than one month. So legally they are entitled to do that but in practice, this is not feasible. So for the first time in Bangladesh before the 2018 election which was 11th national parliamentary election, the election commission allowed the migrants to vote but there was not a single vote from overseas. There was only one vote from internal migrant from other district inside the country. So the law is there but due to, I would say, procedural challenges is not possible but it's also legal challenge because the law doesn't allow any other way of voting except postal ballots. So the way around could be voting using secure internet gateway or a sublishing voting centers in Bangladesh embassies and consulate overseas but the law doesn't allow this procedure. So the provision is there, only requirement is to change the procedure for the law. I think that's the main challenge of voting. As I have, I think a few minutes more time I will explain a couple of more challenges. One more challenge is the issue of dual citizens. So among the nearly 10 million migrants living overseas close to 2.4 million are living in Western developed countries like the US, UK and Australia, Italy, Greece. So they are mostly citizens of the country. That means they are dual citizens of Bangladesh and their host country. And there is a lot of concerns in Bangladesh, both from politicians and from election commission regarding their voting rights. So the problem is the campaign for voting rights coming from those migrants living in Western countries who might have dual citizenship and they might be able to vote in that country but the majority of migrants who are less skilled or un-skilled migrant workers from rural areas living in the Gulf countries in Southeast Asia in low-paying jobs. So they are mostly quiet in this front. So the majority of the migrants, I would say because of their lower educational economic status, they are almost absent from this migrant voting campaign and discussion. And another challenge is that many of these countries, especially in the Gulf countries, they have very limited or no democracy for their own citizens. So any election procedure, for example, which involve voting and campaign for voting might be discouraged by the host government. So that could be another challenge in case the voting procedure is realized. And also for many of these workers covering the chart of international posters at least twice, it could be quite expensive. And I think another major issue, not just for the migrant workers but also the voters in Bangladesh is the declining confidence in election and the fading election in Bangladesh. So the recent election has been allegedly been full of many irregularities including election fraud, intimidation of voters, use of muscle. So in that situation, while local voters have lost confidence, voters living outside country, they may not spend their time and money on the voting procedure if they don't have any confidence in the outcome of election. I think that's all from me and looking forward to the discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. May I call on Sian Peck to present the experiences of Bhutan? Thank you very much. I have some slides. I don't know if I can share them only just to make it a little more interesting instead of just looking at the person. And I will try my best to keep it within five minutes. Is it possible? I've been disabled. Oh. No, you should be right to share your slides now. Yes, does this work? Hold on a second. Okay. So we're the, in a sense, the youngest democracy in the neighborhood. So our experience in terms of democratic elections has only been since 2008. And our population, I think Bhutan, as many people may know or may not, we're less than a million people. In fact, less than 800,000 people and we became a democracy in 2008. I think Shakun mentioned the voting figures as of 2018 was 71%. But when democracy was first introduced in 2008, there was a lot of interest. So there was 79%. Then it dipped and it came up again, all right? But the current registered voters, we have less than half a million. So I know some of my friends in the larger countries must be thinking this must be a breeze. But, you know, not that easy, even though numbers are small. I mean, we often say that Bhutan is a country of short distances, but very long journeys because we're a mountainous landlocked country. So we have 47 constituencies, all right? And that makes it also much more challenging. So internally, in terms of who are the migrants, we actually have a very large rural urban migration in Bhutan. 40% of our population have moved districts since birth. So many people spend decades living outside their place of registration, their place of birth, so-called, many of them are there because they work in the civil service, they go for school, they look for jobs, okay? So that's one point. And in fact, Bhutan's internal migration is considered one of the highest in South Asia. A lot of it is pushed by the fact that there are a lot of inequities between rural and urban places of residence. Many people, once you get to go to school, you want to go to, you know, larger towns, all right? So 45, okay, 2017 census says 45% of the people, total resident population, have migrated between districts. Externally, we also see a growing number of Bhutanese moving overseas. First to study, many left for studies and eventually even now for employment and international migration, according to the figures, Bhutan is among the top three in South Asia, all right? About 5.4% of our population live abroad, okay? And that's quite a notable number for a very small country. In terms of figures, it's really hard to tell because there's no central agency, everyone's doing their own data collection, but UNDESA has stated that in 2019, there are 53,000 Bhutanese living overseas to work or for studies. And this represents 7% of the population. So what drives migration? I think we all know it's the same reason, studies, to live in a better place, seeking employment, all right? I'll skip the impact. So the challenges, I go straight to it. One of the challenges of our enfranchising vote is the fact that many people do not vote from their place of residence and they have to travel great distances to vote. And when you have general elections in the typical year, you may have to go back three times. And imagine if some of these people have to travel a whole day or two days to get there, another two days to get back or one day. So this has been an impediment, but it's also due to the fact that culturally, many people do not change their senses. They don't register in their place of work, even though let's say you're a civil servant and you've lived in the capital for 25 years, many people don't change their registration to be able to vote from the capital. They're still tied to their homes. So there's a very strong sense of kinship, okay? So that's one. Then in a country without home mail delivery and street addresses, having postal ballots, et cetera is very difficult, okay? We're just still naming streets and the government is still talking about it, all right? Unfamiliarity with postal ballots and a lot of complex procedures for registration in the beginning was a deterrent as well. So there's one peculiarity in Bhutan and that is the fact that for municipal elections, for example, Votorship is really, really low. The capital, in the capital, Timpur, where many people live, only 7% of the residents have to vote, right? And the others, many of whom have lived there for decades do not vote. So this poses a kind of a barrier to the kind of representation that we're talking about, right? The inclusiveness that Shakhwin mentioned, okay? Making it quite difficult for people. Then challenges of this mountainous terrain, a lot of the country is like this, all, you know, these are good roads in the more rural areas, they're feeder roads and much more difficult. And the election commission, sometimes to bring a team up to, let's say, the more rural areas is costly, logistically difficult. And we have something like 20 persons per square kilometer. This is the population, right? 20 people per square kilometer. So that is another challenge. And there are limited postal ballot facilitation booths, especially in the early years. And that made it quite difficult for people who decide not to keep traveling for elections. Internationally, I think access to postal ballots have improved, but there is a need for a lot more facilitation, you know, because people live, you know, when you are students or when you're so focused on your job, you find it very costly, you know, to have to post and mail your ballots, et cetera. Although the ECB, the election commission of Bhutan is now telling people that if you can get it to your closest diplomatic mission, the cost of the pouch, et cetera, will be borne by the election commission. So the prospects, no, where are the, no, okay. I won't go into the prospects. But basically, I think the issues are not large, but some of the rules prevent things from changing too quickly, especially for elections in towns. And, you know, and COVID has actually provided a lot of push to think out of a box, you know. And so they've taken a lot more mobile voting booths, you know, to people who are unable, disabled, elderly, et cetera, who live in rural areas. So this has helped. And with this pilot and experiment, I think the election commission of Bhutan actually is a lot more confident about being able to expand access and enfranchising more people, you know, in the coming elections. Yeah. Is that within five minutes? Pretty close. Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, you put me on the spot now because I have to, I have to speak for Madhasmita. Sorry, your slide is still on. Let me get rid of it. Yeah. Is it gone? That's gone. Thank you. Thank you very much. Your timing was absolutely excellent. I'm wondering how I'm going to present India in the same time frame. Thank you. As Antonio said, unfortunately, Madhasmita was not able to participate. So I'm going to try and summarize her paper for her. I'd like to point out that India has the largest transnational community with 18 million people living overseas. That's almost the population of other small countries in the region. More than Bhutan, as Dan just pointed out. But the most compelling figure in the Indian experience is that the largest flows of India's population movements are internal and 37% of their population are known as internal migrants. And that number is 458.8 million people. So their definition of internal migrants citizens who are now settled in a place different from their previous residents. She also points out that there are interesting typologies of migratory flows. There are the people who go as long-term migrants, usually the international migrants, as well as the internal migrants who migrate for settled employment in different parts of the country. But many migrants are short-term, temporary, seasonal, or what they call circular migrants who go to and fro from between two places, depending if they're agricultural workers, they go for seasonal harvest, et cetera. So there's an enormous movement of those people and they consider them far more difficult to capture and document in statistics. She also points out that 175 million migrants in India are those who work in the informal sector. And we saw some very compelling images of these people who during the pandemic were asked to go back home. And they were great distances from home and their lives are so marginal that they didn't even have the resources to get from point A to B. There are clearly in India too, regions that have attraction for migrants and those that export migrants the developed states like Gujarat and the, I think, Karnataka, Karnataka attract and Haryana attract migrants and states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, they provide the migrants. So there are some imbalances that come as a result of this. And the drivers of migration, of course, are poverty, the economic reasons, et cetera. But we have to distinguish between aspirational migrants who know that they are improving their prospects by going to another place and distressed migrants who are going because they have no other choice. So there are motivations and their ability to, you know, withstand the challenges of migration as well differ as a result of this. Going straight into the status of the franchise of migrant workers, I think we all remember and think of India as the world's largest democracy and the fantastic job that the election commission has done to be able to increase the number of voters who are registered, to be able to deliver the vote to very rural and inaccessible places. The integrity of the vote which has been improved in India, the fact that they run elections at the state level, the local level, panchayat level, as well as national level, all these are remarkable features. But nevertheless, in spite of all this, there still is a large number of people who are absent from the voting mechanisms. They are the invisible voters, they are eligible to vote, but they are physical absent from their constituency at the time of registration and on the election day denies them the right to vote. And since we have all documented this over time and it's a well-known and established fact, and since we understand the migratory flows, et cetera, the question is what can be done now to improve this, to bring down the levels of migrant decent franchisement and what kind of provisions can be made at the interstate level and the inter-constituency level to include them in the vote. Now, the paper also refers to some improvements that the election commission has been able to make to address some very specific challenges. For example, they have introduced special voting facilities for select categories of migrants to cast their ballots in person at transitory camps using postal ballots because they've had to address, for example, the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir and the displacement of people from their homes. So some provisions were made to set up voting booths in transitory camps to be able to capture the vote. This has been difficult, but they have been able to do it and they have a special category for modified voters who can vote by postal ballots in places that are not the consequences of their origin. Similarly, they have used special mechanisms in the Mizuram state. They're also people are residing in transitory camps. Now, they have recognized that, you know, many people are decent franchise, not simply because they go to work in different places, but they're decent franchise due to political conflict. And there is a very great incentive for the election commission to address this. But there are some ongoing conflicts that have not been addressed very satisfactorily. For example, the conflict in the Chitagong Hill tracks which are now in neighboring Bangladesh have generated quite a few migrants who have been displaced to other parts of India in Arunachal Pradesh, for example. And their presence in the state is being contested. And as a result of it, circular has been put up to resist their inclusion and this has led to some political contestation. In fact, the election commission took a strong stand going counter to cabinet resolution to say that they wouldn't conduct any elections or carry out election related work in four assembly constituencies unless the state cabinet withdrew or amended what is considered to be a very discriminatory resolution. Similarly, in the case of Assam, the growth of the number of internal migrants have now challenged, created tensions in the Assam state which has led to some initiatives introduced by the state government and the federal government which will lead to the disenfranchisement of many people. So in spite of some of these special measures that have been done to address certain conflict areas and in fact, also special initiative has been introduced to have the vote of non-resident Indians overseas in Western democracies where a postal ballot is possible. But they have still not come up with a solution to address absentee voting for the general masses and considering that India has such a large number of the internal migrants, this is a great challenge in the country. A large number of Indians have moved to as international migrants to the Gulf Cooperation countries and as I said earlier, while some of them are unskilled and the worthless and voiceless, there are also some who are extremely affluent and contributors to the Indian economy. And so these issues still have to be resolved. So the paper points out that, you know, India has signed up to many international governance and they have a great track record about voting and improving the franchise. But the election commission itself has recognized that the present process of enrolling migrants, asking migrant workers to submit proof of their new residence, sending up being present on voting day, they might in fact, once they register in a certain place they may not be there during the voting date because they are seasonal migrants. All this puts a big burden and onus on the voter and these are issues that the election commission believes they should address. So the election commission, besides its special measures that it has done to address the voting in conflict areas, it has also submitted a proposed as the Ministry of Law and Justice to extend absentee voting through postal provisions to overseas non-resident Indians. And I think this was passed in the parliament but not in the Rajasabha and because the government had changed. So it's still pending legislation and it's something that could and perhaps will be taken up very quickly. But nevertheless, they have not still come up with a proposal for enfranchising internal migrants and that is one of the biggest challenges. And in fact, she points out in the paper that internal migrants are denied even the basic civil and political rights because internal migration is not a priority in the government policy. And so I think it's a question of political will also to find these solutions. And the paper also points out that to address this issue of voting rights of migrants or absentee voters, really it needs a greater effort of inclusion and enfranchisement. And if they recognize or acknowledge that keeping a large segment of the population unregistered and denied the vote is really a challenge for Indian democracy. And it is necessary for the government to innovate and transform itself to make voting accessible. Thank you. And I'm sorry that I did go well over time. Antonio, sorry. The next speaker is Shahinda Ismail from Maldives. Thank you, sir. And thank you, Adia, for the research and this presentation as well. Yeah, I will just jump into a very little background and then the challenges from the Maldives keeping the time in mind. So the Maldives is made up of less than 500,000 people. So if we are going to speak in numbers, it is almost irrelevant. But the fact remains that every citizen is entitled to all of these rights that we speak about. So in that sense, migration is actually mostly internal in the Maldives. And those who have emigrated from the Maldives, from what I have seen is almost completely eliminated from social and political participation in the Maldives as of now. And the internal migration in the Maldives is mostly towards urban centers, as would be the case in most places. And in the Maldives, it is mainly to the capital, Mali, which is also the most densely populated city in the world at this time. It is also circular. As Sakunthala just mentioned about India, we have a large fishing population. We have a huge tourism industry where tourism workers travel back and forth between the places of residence and the islands where they work at the hotels. And this particular group of workers currently really struggling to be able to participate in elections, especially. Health and other work also contributes to the circular movement. The drivers are also similar to other presentations that we have heard today in need of basic facilities, such as health, education, employment. And interestingly, previous studies on migration in the Maldives have also highlighted the reason to find a better life from respondents to different studies. And it is also highlighted that once people do migrate into the urban centers, they realize that it is actually not that nice a life in these urban centers due to the congestion and the cost of living in these areas. External migration from the Maldives is mostly to India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, the UK, and Australia. Again, mostly for education, employment, due to political persecution, and marriage. So the biggest challenge that I have seen from my study in the Maldives is that in-person voting is mandatory. So you have to present yourself to a voting booth to be able to participate. And there's absolutely no other form of voting. There is no mail voting. There is no internet-based voting. And unfortunately, it was very recently declared by the Elections Commission that, well, the chair of the commission actually said that there will not be any discussion over moving to mail voting in the Maldives at this time because there is no interest from the political parties to do this. Another challenge with the existing system of voting is that most people, a larger number of people actually within the Maldives, they are not registered in their usual place of residence, which means that they are required by law to re-register for each election. And this causes it is extremely chaotic during this particular process. And then they have to re-register again for the next election. And at times when you have by-elections and several elections in one year, it gets extremely confusing, even for the voters. And there was a particular case a few weeks ago in the Maldives where we had a by-election for a specific constituency. And where in-person voting was required again and the voting station was only in one place, and on this particular island, a lot of people work on the hotel resort islands nearby. And it was also the cause for a lot of people not to be able to participate in this particular by-election because they were not able to go back to their home islands to vote on that day. And it has been the case that it is always the political opposition who always introduced the dialogue on male voting or absentee voting. And then it is the government or those in power who do not want to have this conversation. And this, I think, is the cause for the decision not to talk about it anymore. In my study, I also interviewed some Maldivian migrants living outside. And 99% of the respondents actually said that they really badly want to be able to participate in the social and political processes, especially voting. And some of these respondents have actually spent large amounts of money just to be able to travel to a voting station to vote. The current arrangement that has been decided by the elections commission of the Maldives is that outside of the Maldives, in order to be able to set up a voting station, at least 150 voters need to register for that specific city. So in the last presidential elections in the Maldives, it was just Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, and London. So for example, people who live in Australia actually had to travel to Malaysia or to the Maldives to vote. And people living in parts of Europe have to travel to London to vote. And this is a huge burden on the voter. So what comes in next is that political parties or politicians offer to support the transport and other costs related to voting for these people. And then it, at some point, becomes not a very free vote because people feel obliged and grateful for the people who enable these people to vote. So this is what has been happening until now. And another thing that I observed with people living outside of the country is that almost all immigrants actually left the country initially for higher education. And then for different reasons decided to permanently move outside, which means that by excluding these people in the political processes and the social processes, the Maldives is actually losing out on a lot of knowledge and expertise that would not otherwise be available inside the country. Because the reason these people had to leave for education is because it was not available in the Maldives in the first place. So the other group of people outside are the political dissidents. And understandably, there is a political interest not to include them in political participation. That was my points to note today. And if there are any questions, I'm happy to take them. Thank you. Thank you very much. You are very economical in your timekeeping. And that was great. We'll note down some issues to take up later. Can I now call Bhopal Sivakote to present the Nepal experience? Thank you so much. I haven't had proper slides with me, but let me try to share what I have done instantly so that because there are some faction figures, it would be easier to understand. But would you please enable the screen sharing for me? You should be right now? Yeah, because it has been disabled. The screen sharing. You're a co-host. You should be able to screen share now. You have the bottom. OK. The bottom of the screen. OK. You highlight the bottom of your screen. It's the green button. OK, let me, yeah, yeah, let me. But I can't find my thing. Yeah. You need to position your cursor at the bottom of the screen. Yeah, yeah, I just see the screen. And then I am trying to look for my. OK, hang on. All right, all right, I found it. Sorry. Can you say it? Can you all say it? Yes, we can. OK, thank you. All right. First of all, I'd also like to acknowledge the support which was given to me by two of my co-researchers, namely Srijanapokharal and Dr. Vikal Shrestha. And so my presentation here is basically based on the questions provided by my international idea. So and with regards to timing, are we still. Is it still five minutes where we have some leverage? I'll proceed accordingly. Oh, five minutes. OK. Now the five minutes starts now. OK, thank you so much. All right, rest on the questions about who are the migrants and the typology, internal, external, high skill, not skill documented undocumented, et cetera. So in terms of internal migrants, basically, we have people migrating from what you call is vertical migration from the hills and mountains to the southern belt, which is also known as a rice ball. That it obviously suggests like why we call it rice ball. That means it is there is more economy prosperity and there is more in a better opportunity for hands and mouth for themselves and for the families. Because mountain terrains are really difficult and there is no road, there is no road network and there is no other kind of facilities, et cetera. So people tend to move down south. In terms of external mobility, it is basically most of the most of the negligence migrants as for the data, they go to Malaysia followed by GCC countries, namely Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait. And then in 2020, I have not calculated that into a dollar yet. But altogether, 961 billion Nebulas Rupees was generated 2020 despite the pandemic. In terms of skills or not, yes, most of the overseas contractual migrants labor are low skill. And unfortunately, I have to work in the four desorbs, what you call difficult, dirty, dangerous and even demeaning sometimes, you know, so. And then in terms of documented or undocumented, yes, most of the Nebulas migrants are documented, but there have also been cases of what people use on orderly or irregular or undocumented channels. And there are some certain percentage of people also going to other countries besides India. But with Russia, India, we have a special treaty called a Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1950. That allows the nationalists from the either side, you know, for domiciles and work and everything. So there is no visa regime access between these two countries. Currently, now the other questions about how many and where they are. Yes, approximately 4.3 million Nebulas. That is a very kind of sometimes, it's what you call sometimes estimation and even guesstimation because of the open and porous borders with India and irregular mobility sometimes is very difficult to actually establish the proper statistics. But based on different sources, you know, this has been some kind of, you know, accepted kind of number more than 4 million Nebulas, about like one for 14 percent of the total population of the productive age group of 20 to 40 other countries and 15 percent of the population are out of the district within the country. So when we're talking about absentee voters, then we need to consider about 15 percent of the people who have not been able to vote, you know, in their constituency because they live in different districts. And approximately 18, 10 males, means one in 10 females, they migrated for employment most commonly to the Middle East, 32 percent in India, the 70 percent. So with regards to another question about push and pull factors, both in terms of international and internal. Yes, these are basically more or less the similar kind of, you know, dynamics we can see, for example, yes, more economic conditions in Nepal is, you know, what you call LDCs or LLDC landlocked least developed country. And so we are talking about employment, you know, and the conflict, a good lack of education, health care and etc. Some of these are the triggering factors. And there are, of course, many factors opposite reverse. If you just reverse these factors, then economic and better economic condition, employment opportunities and other better living options in terms of social security and more freedom in urban areas. You know, that's what. So the attraction of littering towns and cities is always there. And in terms of external push factors, like, of course, again, because of the fewer jobs, low wages, poor facilities and, you know, peer pressure or the neighbor guy, the neighborly envy, you know, somebody goes and even if the person is a good condition in terms of, you know, social status and, you know, economic status, but still people move and disaster, interim conflict and social culture issues. And now the climate is also quite emerging, quite a bit in the past context. And external push factors are again, yes, there has been increased demand for workers in particularly in GCC in Malaysia. And then, of course, relatively better in terms of hard cash money. And of course, people also go for better education. I'm talking about that for a community and then promise of a better life, you know, and the green pasture, everything has been a part of this. And the addressing the questions is very easy because whether there is there is outcountry voting or, you know, a procedure for what you call absentee voters, no, we don't have anything yet. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel that. That there has been some process, which I will talk during the discussion. But addressing the question over five, what are the challenges preventing them from being enfranchised? But obviously, we don't have OCB process in real sense, even though the Supreme Court and the Parliamentary State Office Committee have given clear direction, you know, stepwise direction to the election commission to proceed for, you know, the OCB procedure in Nepal, but still everything is in a limbo. Challenges, of course, again, absence of political will and collective wisdom. Nepal is a tiny nation with giant aspirations. So a lot of debate and discourse takes place on a smaller issue. And this is a bigger issue. So obviously, it's going to take a long time for having big fight on, for example, an MCC now, you know, in the parliament. So similar kind of things, you know, because this is a big issue. And so there are operational issues similar to other countries, financial. And of course, there are some strategic interests also because of the size of the diaspora community, size of the migrants and who represents home, where is the bank, voters bank, you know, whose voter banks are they, for example? So that would create a lot of, you know, strategic interest. And then, of course, in terms of access, diaspora community like the permanent residents and citizens may have a better opportunity into access, but for migrants, it will be very difficult if they have to vote in person, for example. And there is no, so because of absence of national consensus and also citizenship is a big issue in Nepal. According to a study carried out by one organization also with the help of UNHCR that all together 5.2 million people do not have the citizenship certificate. They are citizens, but they don't have the card. You know, so it's a big, big, big issue. And also resident status with regards to, you know, because we don't have a dual citizenship provision in our constitution as well as any law. And then, but we have the what we call non-resident Nepalese status NRN with certain privileges. So, so these are some of the issues of our contention. And I'm sorry, I know, I know I stretch my the time, but that is what I could do within the, you know, timely within the content and the rest of the question. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Gopal. I think by putting up the slides, you were able to rush through a lot of the very meaty points and you only marginally off time. Thank you. And can we move on to Ali Imran from Pakistan? You have to take the screen down. Can we take Gopal's screen down? I, yes, I am hanging. Ali, you can start in the meantime. OK, OK, thank you, Sahaguntala. First of all, thank you, ideas for initiating this very important research. And when I was listening to other researchers from the region, I think what I believe is that we share the same issues and same challenges. And now this is the time that we should build on our shared efforts to have the solutions and share our best practices, what each country of us is doing in this regard, because the problem is almost the same about Pakistan, as Spongla has already mentioned in her opening remarks as well, it's the fifth most populous country of the world. And it's amongst the top 10 countries in terms of international migration. Currently, Pakistan has over eight million international migrants, and we have around 26 million internal migrants. But once it comes to migration, I think we have the same Polish factors, mainly both for the international and national migration. Most of the international migration is due to economic situation in the country where there are a lack of job opportunities, lack of resources here. So people tend to go abroad to do jobs. The other two major reasons are the climate change, as well as the regional conflicts and the fear of violence and persecution in the region. So these are the three major reasons for the migrations, both internal and abroad. As far as the migration is concerned, most of these migrations are long term, like international migrations, they are long term because people tend to go there for jobs and until and unless the economic situation in their host countries changes are the laws and policies over there changes, they tend to stay over there. Most of the migration from Pakistan is to the Gulf countries, the six Arab countries. Ninety six percent of the Pakistanis international migrants have moved from Pakistan to these six countries in the Middle East. The rest four percent are mainly migrants to the Europe, mainly to UK, Italy, Spain and France, as well as to the USA. So there's two kind of like migrations because the low skilled or semi skilled workers, they tend to go more to the Middle East. But those who have higher studies are having like better skills. They prefer to migrate to to the European countries or to the USA. We have both regular and irregular migrations, but irregular migration, of course, is difficult to document. But we have recently seen, for example, we have recently seen around 20,000 asylum seekers in three different countries, including Australia, because one religious ethnic community in Pakistan, Hazara, they are facing persecution here and they are migrating to Australia and seeking asylum over there. As far as the country's situation in regards to dealing with these migrants and their voting rights, currently the internal migrants, they are not defined in the law. They are not recognized in the law. And as as with regards to many other countries in the region, we also have the paper ballot system where the voter has to be present in physical spaces on the election day. And that is quite challenging for many of the internal migrants because they are located at other places and then it's difficult for them to get back to their original circumstances on election day. Economically, it's not viable for them. They are doing jobs, so they cannot take a day, a couple of days off just to get back to vote. With regards to international migrations, of course there were certain discussions and there were certain political reforms as well. We had electoral reforms in 2017 and we had election act over there. We says that election commission should do some pilots to have international migration voting rights done. So we had eye voting experience in 2018 by elections and there was like some 7,000 water registered and many of like around 6,500 they voted. But the committee who has that observation of that eye voting system has made that this voting system is flawed, it's not viable and it is against the constitution because of the secrecy aspect. So this was the challenge at that time. With regards to internal migrants because Pakistani law does not allow all internal migrants to have the postal ballot. The postal ballot is only allowed for the security forces of Pakistan who are doing security jobs somewhere are the people who are managing the elections are prisoners and the person with disabilities. So these are the recently included section of society who have the leverage to have the postal ballot. But apart from that, other internal migrants they're not entitled, they're not, arrangements are not made for them to vote. And that is the one reason why the Pakistan, Pakistan of course there might be many reasons but Pakistan has the lowest voter turnout in the region. In last election we only had 51% of our electorate voting and this absentee voting due to migration is one of the major reasons because if we talk about 17% of the total population internally are externally migrated and if we see the percentage of electorate it's going to be 30%. So that's one of the major reasons why there is no voter turnout. The other reasons for low voter turnout in Pakistan is also a gender issue as well because 12 million women voters they are not registered as voter because it's a condition for the voter to have national identity card and many of these women do not have those identity cards. That's why we have 12 million missing women voters from our electorate. Other major reasons of course are the volatile political history of Pakistan because we don't have like we have 10 to 12 years of democracy and then we have 10 to 12 years of military regions and one major reason and final reason for low voter turnout is the distrust of people of Pakistan on parliamentary election system. So that's another major reason why many people they don't tend to come out and vote for that. So that's broadly about the situation right now of course like there are certain pressures and there are certain political movements here in Pakistan as as mentioned there are cultural barriers as well because many of the Pakistani they believe that those migrants who have migrated to Europe and have enjoyed the dual nationalities should not be given the voting rights. So there are cultural barriers on the migration voting rights as well but there are some promising recent movements in Pakistan and we write like in just a month ago in December we have some changes in the law where it is now made mandatory by law for the election commission to ensure the voting rights of overseas Pakistanis and through using electronic EVMs electronic voting machines. So some recent movements are there some opportunities are there. The challenge is still huge because we still don't have anything for the internal migrants and we still have some logistics and financial and political challenges around making arrangements for the international migrants despite the fact that we have no change in the law. Thank you, I'll leave it here and... Thank you very much, Ali. Sorry that we are rushing you but our final speaker now will be Pakistanis the Saravanamuttu. I'm very sorry that the speakers towards the end of the session were truncated more aggressively but Pakisodi may I call on you and when you finish we will open the floor for some questions from the participants as well. Pakisodi from the Center for Policy Alternatives presenting the Sri Lankan case. Thank you, Saku. I won't take too long. I have focused in my contribution on the migrant workers particularly to the Middle East. They are not of course the only Sri Lankans who are outside of Sri Lanka. There are all the people who left the North and East as a consequence of the ethnic conflict but they are largely either now citizens of the host countries or asylum seekers of some kind and do not intend in the main to participate in elections in Sri Lanka. They have more or less given that up. There are some of course who still retain dual nationality because of questions of property inheritance and all of that but they are not a significant number but they do retain that and on that question of dual nationality it became an issue with regard to the Rajapaksa brothers ruling family in Sri Lanka and I think the issue is more or less in the public domain that you cannot stand for addiction if you are a dual national but certainly if you are in the country at the time of elections and on the electoral register you can vote. Now the vast majority of the people that I'm referring to the migrant workers as I said are in the Middle East. There are a large section of them who are basically low skilled and semi skilled workers particularly housemaids, drivers, construction workers, etc. Now the issue of them being given the vote has arisen in a number of cases but I think the main obstacle to them being able to vote in elections is because of political will. First and foremost, if they are in Sri Lanka and if they are in Sri Lanka indeed before they migrate in terms of getting a contract and going to the Middle East and they're on the electoral register they are not therefore disenfranchised. It is a question of how they exercise that vote. There are, there is postal voting but that's postal voting within Sri Lanka particularly for the armed forces. The provision of postal voting for those who are migrant workers who are on the electoral register but not in the country at the time of elections is non-existent. And all the usual arguments are made with regard to as to why no provision has been made to allow them to vote. And these are of course ranging from the costs, the difficulties in establishing a level playing field between political parties to give access to material. The fact that a number of the housemaids in the Middle East, their identity documents, et cetera are taken away from them by their employees. The argument with regard to, given that there aren't elections in some of those countries that they may not be particularly interested in assisting the government of Sri Lanka in this respect but a number of arguments are put forward which in my opinion are not insuperable. The numbers that we are talking about in this respect is roughly about 1.5 million. And they have in the last decade historically been the highest foreign exchange remittances in the country. Now that 1.5 million may well fall because of the COVID pandemic but nevertheless it is potentially a game-changing number. Now, one of the principal reasons for the lack of political will is that in Sri Lanka I think the political parties haven't yet decided on what the electoral system ought to be. There is a lot of debate with regard to constitutional reform and also the question therefore of whether we now have a proportional representation system where the basic unit is the district but as to whether we should move to a mixed system what the proportion should be in that mixed system should we have partly passed the post and partly proportional representation. So those are the issues that dominate the discussion with regard to electoral reform. Migrant voting is on the agenda but it's far down below because political parties don't feel that it is as of importance as with regard to whether they can secure a two-thirds majority in parliament through a new electoral system or not. So the push the advocacy with regard to migrant voting then falls on the shoulders of civil society. We now have an election commission. It is not entirely independent because it is appointed effectively by the president but it is on the shoulders of civil society organizations electoral monitoring organizations that the issue has fallen and indeed their alliance with those organizations that look after the interests of migrant workers. But we have not succeeded in getting any progress or any promise indeed of progress from the political authorities. So it is an ongoing battle if you like in terms of recognizing that these people are effectively being disenfranchised because the means through which they can exercise their war are not made available to them and that they are therefore providing a great service to the country in terms of the remittances but effectively disenfranchised. So in Sri Lanka I think the issue at the end of the day is the willingness and ability of the political parties to recognize this as a question of priority on the electoral reform agenda. Thank you. Thank you, Sara. You have been absolutely spot on time. Thank you. I will open the, oops, how do I, I will open the floor for questions or comments from the participants. Please raise your hand or enter your questions in the chat. Is there anyone who would like to make a comment or ask a question? And if not, I could just ask a question to some of the panelists while our participants are considering their responses. I think in the case of, what is it you said? If I will only understand my own writing. It was, I think one of the issues that was raised, I think in the Maldivian case is that the political parties are quite involved in bringing, in ferrying people over to vote, the out of country voters, which I think many other countries would have legislation against to be able to transport voters and thereby influence the vote. And if you really can bring voters from overseas, you can really talk about what enormous, watch these political parties must be having to be able to do this. So that also talks about corruption in the electoral process. I was wondering whether in the Maldives or other countries, there is a possibility for migrants to organize or civil society to help migrants to organize to be able to make that demand through electoral, through the legislative remorse, to bring an independent, maybe the legislator to be able to raise some of these issues in parliament, to be able to take their issues on board because since they have no representation in parliament, they have to look for a special process and whether that is viable. May I quickly? Yeah. Or is it for, it's a Maldivian friend or is it just for anyone? No, this is the general comment. I mean, I raised the question from what Shaheen just said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's a very important question whether, like how things are moving on the part of the parliament because parliament is the place where the laws needs to be debated or the bills needs to be debated and discussed and adopted. So until last year, because of the Supreme Court's verdict in followed by the parliamentary state affairs committee's direction to the Electoral Commission and the Electoral Commission already undertaking the country of origins assessment in few countries, basically in Southeast Asia and also in few destination countries, means the host countries, there have been, there are some momentum already geared up and the parliamentary human rights and justice committee also raised this issue that the after-country voting will be one of the top most priorities for to ensure electoral integrity and for what they call inclusive democracy in the country. So it was very much there until last year. But because of the political kind of the glitches here, high voltage tension going on even now and the party splits and followed by other major non-business business in the parliament that this issue has been somehow oversaturated. Otherwise the civil society, for example, all the election monitoring committees have brought out this one of the major recommendations submitted to the government that then prime minister as allows to the Electoral Commission. So the Electoral Commission is, it is in their business. It is in their bucket list at least. It is not out of the radar. So it is going on. So parliament has taken a lot of interest on this. So hopefully when things will be settled, then it will have, now we'll go for another mega push for this. Thank you very much. I see Shahinda's hand up. Yeah. Thank you. I just wanted to say that it is not officially organized by political parties and politicians as such in the Maldives, the ferry. So as you know, the Maldives is made up of several very small islands divided by the sea, by the ocean. And on each island is a very small community of people. So when, for example, someone in a car or someone with a speedboat or a boat approaches you and say, I'm here to help you reach a polling station, you know who this person is representing, which political party this person is representing. It does not have to be officially communicated. So it has, it becomes very complex to kind of prohibit that through legislation, you know. But it is widely known from all of the interviews that I conducted for this research, everyone seemed to be aware of who was supporting their transport on that. I almost misunderstood you because I thought they were actually offering this to overseas waters also. It is offered to overseas waters as well. It is offered to overseas waters as well. Overseas or intercontinental, I mean, are they offering tickets from Malaysia and Australia as well? Yes, yes. And from different regions, for example, if there is a, I mean, I experienced it myself. So you live in some part of the UK and somebody approaches you and say, we can fund your transport and whatever costs related to your voting in London. Thank you. But I hope there will be, what the secrecy of ballot will be observed, even if somebody pays for you or for somebody, you know, that that is not screened or there's no surveillance as such. These days, I trust it is not. So you can tender your expression of free will, right? Without any kind of surveillance, okay, thank you. May I contribute, Sir Kunzala? Yes, certainly. Okay, well, in case of Pakistan, of course, since internal migrants, they have to be present at the polling station physically on that day, and many of them don't afford to go back to their constituencies. So in Pakistan, many candidates and political parties, they do facilitate their travel and accommodation and also their food as well. So this puts a lot of burden on candidates and it's a huge, like financial expenditure, which is even beyond legal expenditure of an election. For the candidates. And ultimately that leads to corruption as well, because once a candidate is spending like over 100 million PGR on one election, of course, he's not going to earn it back from their salary. So that leads to a way of corruption as well. So there are discussions internally and the society does raise this issue so many times with the election commission of Pakistan and with the parliament of Pakistan, and do ask them that this practice of having like internal migrants at the expense of the candidate, because of course, then they are influenced by who is paying their travel, who is paying their accommodation as well. So that influence their decision to vote as well. So there is so much voices on that in Pakistan. That's a quick question. So is there like mass transit allowed on the election day? For public transportation, et cetera, allowed on the election day? For example, Nepal in Nepal is restricted. There won't be any transportation except for the most essential things. Otherwise no transportation on that day. How about in Pakistan on election day? Well, legally it's allowed for the candidates to provide transportation facility to their voters to bring them to the polling stations. And this practice is widely done, not only for the internal migrants living outside those constraints, but also the voters within that constancy as well. So as I'm telling you that one of the major election expenditure in Pakistan is this election day, transportation and food and all those things. But then of course, democratically, it influences the voters mind as well because once they are like provided this kind of facility by one specific candidate, of course there is tendency to vote that candidate. And that makes amongst the candidate, like it's a race game for them as well to spend more and more on these kind of election day management and the benefit of that. So yeah, that's legally allowed in Pakistan for the candidates. Bashir, your hand is up. Oh, so a couple of things about Afghanistan, Afghanistan's experience when you go to the parliamentary elections and especially the internal displaced population. As I suggested, the electoral system that was adopted for the parliamentary election in Afghanistan was a very rare electoral system. It's called single non-transferable vote system, which only four other countries like Vanuatu, Patuikan Islands and Afghanistan have adopted this one. And Japan that basically has invented this electoral system since 1993, basically get rid of this electoral system because it doesn't work for that country. One of the main problem with this electoral system is to de-incentivize the growth and development of political parties. And in fact, political parties tend to fragment during the elections because of this electoral system. And this electoral system basically encourages patronage and things like that in the election rather than ideology, principles, or political parties. And that has been one of the reasons that in some ways the process was manipulated and particularly when we got to the internal displaced populations. So for example, the candidates would go to these different camps of the displaced population and would offer them temporary reliefs. And instead of, for example, a policy that would solve their problems in the long run to basically get their votes. And with other this electoral system, you could win a seat with 1% of the votes of a province. And in one province, you have multiple seats, but you could win actually with one person or even less than 1% of the votes in the province. And that's why it was very important for some of the candidates, especially in those camps where the displaced population were able to vote to go to these camps and basically offered them some relief. And one of those reliefs were, for example, offering them these transportations to the polling stations where they can vote. And a little bit of money for, for example, to feed their families and things like that. So it has been, in case of events, unfortunately, it has been very disastrous since the electoral system has been very disastrous for the political parties as well as the displaced populations. OK, thank you, Vashiv. I think I did open it up to the participants as well, but I haven't had any response. So perhaps, Antonio, you would like to make some closing remarks. Yes, and in the interest of time, I will try to be as fast as I can. So the country cases that were presented today by our expert group have underscored pressing relevance of a problem that in different ways, to different extents, and because of different push or pull factors, continues to deprive large number of the region population of the right to vote. This is due either to their absence on election day from the constituency of registration, either because there are somewhere else within the country or because they are abroad. As we have seen, the country case presentations offered a bleak outlook in terms of migrant enfranchisement in the eight countries comprising South Asia that we analyzed. And this problem has been overlooked for decades now, while today's globalized world makes it more relevant and urgent to be addressed than ever. So the challenges outlined in today's presentation have also highlighted at this junction between the distances that exist between countries and continents today, which are narrowing and rapidly transforming many other sectors than elections. And the fact that present time elections remain firmly anchored to voting methods that are appearing no longer suited or capable to meet the dynamically evolving needs and rights of populations that are increasingly, are instead increasingly on the move. So we have learned how across Asia limited selective or non-existent absentee voting methods continue to keep migrants trapped between two disenfranchising worlds. The world of their country of origin where they are citizens but they are no longer residents and that of their host country, where they are residents but not yet citizens and probably most of them never will. So while this phenomenon is not exclusively limited to South Asia alone, yet there are several distinguished features that make departments in population movements of this region an outstanding case for our examination. We have seen how the region simultaneously produce and host some of the largest stocks globally of international and internal migrants. And now the region is also projected to continue producing and hosting in the years to come some of the greatest numbers of migrants worldwide. Characterized by permanent migration and seasonal circular migration of workers, entrepreneurs, agricultural workers, refugees, asylum seekers, IDP students and others, South Asian migration is hardly ever voluntary. Rather, we could say that it is state-induced as most migrants are forced to leave their countries either for economic reasons to afford opportunities that the governments are unable to provide them with or they must flee following injustice, insecurity, political, ethnic or religious persecution, violence, natural disasters or conflict which the governments are unable to control or relieve them from or as in the case of Afghanistan, the government itself perpetrate. By and large, the nature of their absence is temporary. So they are migrating for unavoidable necessity. So they leave with the intent to return regularly or to settle back in their country of region once conditions will allow. For these reasons, these migrants maintain close social, cultural, economic, but most of all also political ties with the countries and places of origins and hence they also maintain a keen interest to be included in their political processes. So these were the main challenges that today in franchisement of migrant in South Asia which are for the most common across the region. However, attempting to summarize existing process prospects to address this problem is not as easy because prospects may be relevant for one country context but maybe partly or completely irrelevant or completely irrelevant for the context of another country. For example, if you consider countries as diverse as the Maldives in Bhutan or Afghanistan in Sri Lanka. So despite several similarities, our discussion today has pointed out to South Asia's marked diversity within and between these countries in terms of culture, language, ethnicity, economic development, but also in terms of each country's migratory patterns and flows in the size of their electorate, the vastity and remoteness of their territories, their level of democratic consolidations, the type of electoral systems and in terms of the political will necessary to make bold reforms and also in the availability of resources to fund these reforms. So cognizant that every contest in South Asia is unique. We can conclude that there is not one side fits all solution to the enfranchisement of the region's migrants. And so that making any summary or generalization of what can be done to resolve this problem may be irrelevant and mostly of limited use from one context to another. Nevertheless, among key recommendations for actual action to be taken as a matter of priority by national governments, by ministries, by domestic NGO networks, by international assistance providers and donors alike. Just concluded a discussion as highlighted the following prospective needs. The need for political will necessary to induce decision maker to change this big outlook which could then lead to the necessary legal and procedural reforms. The need for advocacy to raise level of awareness and of political pressure for the need of such reform. Reforms, the need to devise voted methods that can allow migrants to vote while without affecting the integrity of elections. They need to mobilize funds to cover the cost and overcome the numerous operational and logistical barriers that been mentioned. And also need to overcome cultural identity issues that allow voters to remain registered to vote in constituencies in which they no longer steadily reside. So recognizing South Asia's intraragional diversity, today's round table should be seen as a first step towards an initial conceptualization of what challenges are there and what needs to be done in each of the unique environment of these countries to enfranchise once for all absent electorate who have been left for too long out of their democracies. And until the right to vote of migrants remains anachronistically anchored to conventional in-person voting methods that are no longer suited or capable of addressing, pressing and evolving enfranchisement needs, it will be very difficult for the governments to reconcile the increasing mobility of millions of their migrants with the stillness of longstanding normative requirements that are systematically been depriving their absent citizens of their rights, the voting rights. So accordingly, following today's discussion, our next steps entail the following to produce as Lena mentioned at the beginning of this event, to produce a main publication examining the challenges and the prospects for the enfranchisement of migrants in South Asia, to produce select country case studies stemming from the main publication, examining more in depth the specific challenges confronted in the countries and the country analyzed with the aim to operationalize available prospects to address this problem. And last to all the nationally dialogues at country level drawing from local knowledge and experts and expertise to shape advocacy activities and guide prospective reform in the country's contexts analyzed. So unless everyone has anything to add, I would like to conclude these insightful discussions with a special thanks from International Idea to first of all, Saquntala for the excellent moderation and coordination to our director Lena for our continuous guidance and support in developing and taking forward this project to our colleagues, Jenny in particular from behind the scenes have helped organize this event and last but not least to our various speakers for their patients, first of all and their substantive research work and input about the situation of migrants in their respective countries. Thanks everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. It's been a rewarding experience to be part of this process and we shall continue this campaign for the good cause collectively. Well, we will mix