A 2018 agreement that aims to strengthen international cooperation on migration management must become reality, the UN Secretary-General said on Friday in New York.
Fifty-three migrants including two babies are dead or missing after a large rubber dinghy capsized off the coast of Libya, the UN migration agencysaidon Monday.
Step by step, mile by mile, Deo Kato ran his way across a continent and beyond. After a year and a half on the road, the Ugandan British runner and campaigner has become the first person to run from Cape Town to London.
Antnio Guterres presented hislatestbiennialreport onthe Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migrationto Member States during an informal meeting of the General Assembly.
It shows that in 2024,an estimated 304 million people were migrants, or 3.7 per cent of the worlds population. Children accountedfor between 12 to14 percent, or around 37 to 42 million.
Mr. Guterres told ambassadors that the reportmakes one truth unmistakably clear:Migration is not a crisis.The crisis is the failure to manage it together.
Politicised and dehumanised
The Global Compact underscores that no country can manage migration alone, especially as the international community confronts challenges such as climate change, demographicshiftsor economic transformation.
Although human mobility is profoundly shaping the world,the global reaction has too often been driven by fear, division, and rank opportunism,the Secretary-Generalnoted.
Across continents, migrants are being instrumentalised to score political points with devastating human consequences, he said.
They are being dehumanised in public discourse. And they are being denied the rights and dignity that belong to every member of the human family despite the enormous contributions migrants make to economies and societies.
Safepathwaysdecreasing
This is happening at a time when safe and regular pathways for migration labour schemes and family reunification, for example are becoming even more restrictive, pushing people to resort to smugglers andundertakedangerous journeys.
More than 48,000 migrants have died orgone missing in transitsince the Compacts adoption, according to the reportissued a day after the UN migration agencyIOMaffirmedthatsea crossingslike thecentralMediterranean remain among the deadliest routes.
It is a moral outrage that thousands of men, women and children die or go missing every year because no safe alternative exists,Mr. Guterressaid.
Victims, not criminals
He insisted that migrants are not criminals, but victims. The real criminals are the ruthless smuggling and trafficking networks that profit from despair, exploit the absence of safe alternatives, and thrive when cooperation fails and they must be prosecuted and brought to justice.
Meanwhile, many countries have taken important steps since thecompacts adoption,including expanding regular pathways, strengthening labour mobility initiatives,improving search-and-rescue at sea, as well as supporting safer returns and reintegration.
Yet progress is uneven andfar below what todays realities demand.Migration governance needs to be rights-based,gender-responsive,child-sensitive,he said.It must also respect national sovereignty and be grounded in human dignity.
UN Women/Staton WinterAn Indonesian migrant volunteers at an organization in Singapore assisting other migrant workers. (file)
From progress to action
To be effective, countries must work collectively around two fronts, starting withexpanding and simplifying clear pathways of regular migration.
The secondfocused on countries of origin calls forensuring development cooperation that invests in education,skillsand decent job creation.
We must now translate vision into accelerated action for safe, orderly and regular migration, the Secretary-General said.
This includes boosting cooperation to both save lives and strengthen communities, cracking down on smuggling and trafficking networks, ending child immigration detention, matching migrants skills with labour market needs, and confronting toxic narratives with evidence, truth, and humanity.
A better migration story
The Secretary-GeneralsaidtheInternational Migration Review Forumin Maymust help to push countries towards decisive, measurable action.
He stressedthat humane, cooperative migration governance is not only possiblebutessential to a stable,peacefuland prosperous world.
Migration is a story as old as humanity: a story of courage, resilience, and mutual benefits, he said. Our task is to ensure that it never becomes a story of death and despair.
He concluded byurging countries to make the Global Compact real in every region, on every route, for every migrant.
UN Women/Staton WinterAn Indonesian migrant volunteers at an organization in Singapore assisting other migrant workers. (file)
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