GLOBAL COMPACT FOR MIGRATION

About:

• The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is the world’s first, inter-governmentally negotiated agreement covering all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner.
  
  
• Nature: The UN pact is not binding on the parties.
  
  
• Objective: The compact has 23 objectives that seek to boost cooperation to manage migration and numerous actions ranging from technical issues like the portability of earnings by migrant workers to reducing the detention of migrants.
  
  
• Need of agreement: The UN estimates that there are over 258 million migrants living outside their country of birth today — a figure that is likely to rise with growing population, increasing connectivity and trade, rising inequality, and climate change.
  
  
• Timeline:
  • In September 2016, with Europe overwhelmed by waves of migrants from Africa and West Asia, all 193 UN member states adopted a declaration saying that no country could manage international migration on their own
    
    
  • In this background, Global Compact was finalised under United Nations auspices in July this year. It is due to be formally approved at a meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, in December.
    
    
  
  
  
• Opposition to it:
  • Countries dominated by right-wing leaders such as The U.S., Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland had previously done the same.
    
    
  • They have criticised its “almost irresponsibly naive pro-migration tone”, which represented a “danger to national sovereignty”.
    
    
  • They have argued that Migration cannot become a human right. Someone cannot receive a right to migration because of the climate or poverty.