Pathways for migration should be expanded and diversified to meet the United Nations-mandated Sustainable Development Goals and address labour market shortages, said Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General.
It is a must to ensure returns and re-admissions are safe, dignified and in full accordance with international law, irrespective of the reason for migration, Guterres said.
Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration represents the international community’s resolve to put those values into practice in a spirit of solidarity and partnership, he added.
It was meant to confront xenophobia and racism with a clear-headed understanding of the facts, the UN chief said, adding:
It also aims to transform how we understand and manage migration, to make it a source of prosperity, not a byword for inhumanity and to end the tragic loss of life, the outrage of rights abuses, and the tinderbox of social tensions too often associated with migration.
He was speaking at the first International Migration Review Forum convened under the General Assembly in New York May 17-20, 2022.
“Human rights are an absolute value — they apply to each and every one of us, irrespective of whether we are on the move or not, whether that movement is forced or voluntary, or whether it is formally authorised or not,” he said.
Guterres called for strengthened international cooperation across all States and stakeholders to implement the goals.
“Migrants are part of our societies; they must be part of the renewed social contract that I called for in my report on Our Common Agenda to enable individuals, States and others to build trust, increase participation and strengthen social cohesion, including migrants,” he added.
Even though 80 per cent of the migrants move between countries in a safe and orderly fashion, the rest continue to be caught in the realm of traffickers, paying terrible prices for migrating, he said.
He added that thousands of migrants die every year pursuing opportunity, dignity and a better life. Despite being a fact of life, and being as old as humanity itself, migration is often “poorly managed, uncoordinated, misunderstood and vilified”, he said.
“We must do more to break the stranglehold of smugglers and better protect migrants in vulnerable situations, in particular women and girls,” he said. “We must do more to prevent the loss of life -as a humanitarian imperative and a moral and legal obligation.”
Stakeholders across the globe came together at the conference to take stock of the progress towards implementing the UN Global Compact and of the interplay between migration and broader concerns — from the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict, development finance and the climate crisis to human rights and security, as well as health and labour.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has painfully demonstrated how far we still are from realising rights-based, child-sensitive and gender-responsive governance of international migration for all,” he added.
Too often, migrant workers and their families are excluded from sharing in the prosperity they themselves help generate, Guterres said. Throughout the pandemic, we have seen migrants excluded from recovery measures and denied access to basic services, whether health care or social protection, he added.