Global Compact on Migration rested in the hands of sovereign states

Addressing the Annual Highlevel Panel Discussion on Human Rights Mainstreaming, Sri Lanka said that having actively engaged in a number of inter-governmental processes and observing the overwhelming desire of the stakeholders to build consensus and collective outcomes over the last several years, it believed that the “picture is not entirely bleak”, and “there is still hope that multilateralism can deliver despite challenges”.

Sri Lanka’s Deputy Permanent Representative in Geneva Samantha Jayasuriya stated so, speaking on the theme ‘Human Rights in the light of multilateralism: opportunities, challenges and the way forward’, during the ongoing 40th Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva recently.

Making further comments, she said the high-level panel discussion came at a time when there were broader concerns on whether the UN multilateral system was able to respond effectively, to a rapidly changing global peace, security and development architecture. She noted that in the recent years, the multilateral outcomes reached through the Paris Climate Change Summit, the Marrakech Global Migration Compact, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to name a few, had taken a human centric approach, integrating human rights and transforming them into actionable commitments. She stressed, however, that it was time to take a critical look on how and what more could be done to improve UN multilateral processes.

“The core principles and purposes enshrined in the UN Charter such as sovereign equality, non-discrimination and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms remained the guiding light in achieving international cooperation and addressing global

The core principles and purposes enshrined in the UN Charter such as sovereign equality, nondiscrimination and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms remained the guiding light in achieving international cooperation and addressing global socio-economic and cultural issues

socio-economic and cultural issues,” she said, stressing further that the multilateral endeavours sould be; “effective and timely in delivering responses; fair and objective in approach; enabling and equitable in impact or outcome”.

Mrs. Jayasuriya also referred to the Global Compact on Migration (GCM), noting that an instrument of a voluntary nature, the implementation of its elements largely rested in the hands of each sovereign Government. She further commented that given many of the contemporary issues that the world was grappling with being trans-boundary in nature, solutions to them also needed to be global, based on shared responsibility, exchanging experiences and best practices, technical know-how.

She drew the attention of the high level panel to the proposed ‘Global Knowledge Hub’, the ‘start-up fund’, and the ‘connection hub’ of the capacity building mechanism of the GCM, indicating they could only be effective if there was international support forthcoming in the interest of ensuring safe, orderly and regular migration. The proposed quadrennial voluntary reporting at the International Migration Review Panel of the UN General Assembly provided, in her view, a platform to gauge the collective progress in respecting the rights of all migrants irrespective of their legal status.