159 countries to sign UN migration pact

MARRAKESH, Morocco: Politicians from around the globe would gather Monday (Tuesday in Manila) in Morocco for a major conference to endorse a United Nations (UN) migration pact, despite a string of withdrawals driven by anti-immigrant populism.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was

months of talks and is due to be formally adopted with the bang of a gavel at the start of the two-day conference in Marrakesh.

the negotiations late last year, and since then Australia, Austria,

Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia have pulled out of the process.

took a fresh swipe at the pact, la-

- of the

ernance at the expense sovereign right of states.”

But a host of other nations led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel are in Morocco to endorse

- beat that it can help the world better cope with the hot-button issue.

On the eve of the conference,

Migration Louise Arbour hit back at the pact’s critics, insisting the document is not legally binding.

“It is surprising that there has been so much misinformation about what the compact is and what the text actually says,” she told reporters in Marrakesh.

“It creates no right to migrate. It places no imposition on states,” she said, adding that

to attend the conference, includ-

heads of state, heads of government or ministers.

But rows over the accord had

nations, hobbling Belgium’s coalition government and pushing Slovakia’s foreign minister to tender his resignation.

beyond, right-wing leaders had taken increasingly draconian measures to shut out migrants in recent years.

had pledged to build a wall on the

his recent ire on a migrant caravan from Central America, while a populist coalition government in Italy had clamped down on boats rescuing migrants at sea.

Beyond Merkel, among European nations the leaders of Spain,

President Emmanuel Macron is sending his secretary of state for foreign affairs as he deals with the “yellow vest” protests at home.

Belgium’s Liberal Premier Charles Michel won the support of parliament to head to Morocco and back the accord, but he was left leading a minority govern- seven nations described by Arbour as still “engaged in further internal deliberations” over the accord, with Bulgaria, Estonia, Italy, Israel,

- ing into this category.

document on managing migration, the global pact lays out 23 objectives to open up legal migration and discourage illegal border crossings, as the number of people on the move globally has surged to

attempts to manage migration, activists argue that the pact does not go far enough to secure migrants’ rights.

- ing nature of the Global Compact on Migration makes its implementation solely based on the goodwill of states supporting it,” Amnesty International’s Senior Advocate for the Americas,