The United Nations agreed on Friday on wide-ranging ways to cope with the millions of migrants moving from country to country, overcoming “mistrust” and “difficult” issues to draw up the first-ever migration pact, officials said.
The non-binding agreement was approved by all 193 member nations except the United States that pulled out last year.
According to the UN officials, it aims to make migration safe and orderly amid issues of national sovereignty and international cooperation
Latest statistics from the UN indicate that 250 million people around the world are migrants representing at least 3.4 present of the global population.
“Migration is a fact. It has been here for centuries. It is here to stay for centuries more,” Miroslav Lajčák, president of the U.N. General Assembly, told a media briefing.
“But we have never had an instrument that helps us to govern, to manage this process. We have been in reactive mode.”
The official Global Compact For Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration addresses why people migrate, how to protect them, how to integrate them into new countries, means of returning them home and other issues.
Ambassador Jurg Lauber of Switzerland, who helped run the pact negotiations, called it a “catalog of measures” rather than a “one-size-fits-all” set of rules
Formal adoption is set for December in Morocco.
It was agreed by 192 member nations after the United States quit the negotiations saying it was not compatible with U.S. sovereignty.
One objective of the pact is battling human trafficking which is said to be “a cancer of the phenomenon on migration.”
