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Join on Telegram Rabat – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is calling on the world to celebrate migration and acknowledge its benefits. The UN top official believes that the UN’s “Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration,” which will be adopted in Morocco in December this year, provides an opportunity to “maximize the benefits of migration.”
In “Making Migration Work for All,” a report published Thursday, Guterres urges the world’s leaders and governments to embrace and promote foreign labor.
“The basic challenge before us is to maximize the benefits of migration rather than obsess about minimizing risks.”
Speaking in defense of migration, Guterres said that it is “beneficial both for migrants and host communities in economic and social terms – our overarching task is to broaden the opportunities that migration offers to us all.”
The Global Compact on migration will be adopted in the intergovernmental conference on international migration to be held in Morocco in December 2018.
Guterres referred to migration as a “positive global phenomenon” that strengthens “economic growth, reduces inequalities, connects diverse societies and helps us ride the demographic waves of population growth and decline.”
Guterres hailed the world’s migrants as agents of “international development – both by their work as well as through remittances back to their home countries,” valued at “nearly $600 billion, three times all development aid.”
Guterres added that the majority of migrants “live and work legally.” Speaking about the migrants seeking a better life in foreign countries, Guterres said that “ a “desperate majority” risks their lives to reach countries, where they face suspicion and abuse.
On December 24, the UN announced that Morocco will host the 2018 Intergovernmental Conference on International Migration. The North African country will also host the 11th Global Forum on Migration and Development to be co-chaired by Morocco and Germany. The symposium will also take place in December 2018.
The Global Compact for Migration aims to address humanitarian, human rights-related, and developmental aspects of international migration, according to International Organization for Migration (IOM).
It also aims to protect the safety and dignity for all migrants, regardless of their documents’ status. The compact vows to ease pressures on countries that welcome and host refugees; build the self-reliance of refugees; expand access to resettlement in developing countries and other complementary pathways; and foster conditions that enable refugees voluntarily to return to their home countries.
In recent years, Morocco has established itself as a country of destination rather than simply a transit country for refugees and migrants traveling to Europe.
In October 2017, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Volker Turk told Morocco World News that while “Morocco remains a transit country for refugees and migrants, it is also fast becoming a country of destination.”
He added that the North African country is attempting to offer protection to refugees under its National Policy on Immigration and Asylum (NPIA) which was launched in September 2013, under the instructions of King Mohammed VI.
Morocco has also set up a regularization campaign for migrants and refugees aiming to settle in the country.
