UN chief urges world leaders to celebrate migration as a positive

Geneva: The UN secretary general is urging the governments of member states to open up more routes for migration and take steps to promote and safeguard foreign labour.

António Guterres is calling for a collective shift to celebrate the international benefits of migration as part of an ambitious plan to create a more humane global strategy on the issue.

In a report published on Thursday, Mr Guterres said political leaders must take responsibility for ending the stigma surrounding migration and dispel alarmist misrepresentations of its effects. The report, entitled Making Migration Work for All, comes ahead of negotiations on a global compact on migration to be adopted by the UN general assembly later this year. In September 2016, the 193 members of the UN general assembly unanimously adopted a non-binding political agreement, the New York declaration, which pledged to uphold the human rights of refugees and migrants and recognised the need for a comprehensive approach to international migration.

The declaration set in motion a series of consultations on how to deal with the needs of 258 million international migrants and is due to culminate in the formal adoption of a global strategy at a conference in Morocco in December this year.

In an opinion piece for the Guardian, Mr Guterres said the first international agreement of its kind was an “unprecedented opportunity for leaders to counter the pernicious myths surrounding migrants and lay out a common vision of how to make migration work for all our nations”. He said: “The best way to end the stigma of illegality and abuse around migrants is, in fact, for governments to put in place more legal pathways for migration, removing the incentives for individuals to break the rules, while better meeting the needs of their labour markets for foreign labour.”.