UN General Assembly

Intergovernmental Conference

Sixth round of Negotiations

Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration

Statement By

Ambassador Tanmaya Lal, Deputy Permanent Representative

9 July 2018

Co-Facilitators,

• We thank you and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for very ably guiding and supporting this process.
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• This has been a long and difficult negotiation process, involving extensive consultations with various stakeholders, on an issue that has been fraught with political sensitivities internationally.
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• We are now reaching the conclusion of this inter-governmental process that we all expect will lead to the finalisation of a balanced Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration that can be adopted in Marrakesh later this year.
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• We would like to take this opportunity to clarify and reiterate our position on some aspects of the draft Rev 3 that is before us.
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Co-Facilitators,

• As we had stated when this process started, most nation states and societies have been built upon waves of migration over the past several centuries. Migration has continued to expand and is now an integral aspect of the integration of economies over the last few decades.
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• However, since these negotiations are taking place against a difficult backdrop of large movements of refugees fleeing armed conflicts in different parts of the world, it has led to an overwhelmingly negative and misplaced sentiment about this phenomenon.
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• Against this context, the Global Compact on Migration has been an opportunity to counter the anti-immigrant narrative. To some extent we have been successful in doing so.
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• We feel that the text continues to devote disproportionate focus to the situation relating to irregular and illegal migrants.
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• We have argued for a greater prominence upfront in the text to Objectives that specifically focus on removing obstacles to safe, orderly and regular migration.

Co-Facilitators,

• Firstly, since the Global Compact on Migration is clearly about regular international migration and does not relate to refugees, we welcome the return to the language from Rev1, which mentions that both these phenomena are governed by different legal regimes.
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• We also welcome the deletion of a particularly sensitive reference to the ‘principle of non-refoulement’ that had been inserted in the Rev2.
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• This principle had developed to deal with the situations of refugees and refugee-like situations of forced displacement. This is defined by a precise international legal framework because of the very specific and distinct context that forces people to flee and take refuge in foreign lands.
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• Insertion of such a reference to a legal concept relating to the movement of refugees into the discourse on international migration has no consensus. Such a reference had the serious potential to dilute the prospects of a constructive engagement on the issues of interest to migrants and politicize this debate.

Co-Facilitators,

• We strongly feel that the references to disaster and climate-induced forced displacement do not belong to GCM as those situation are much more akin to that of Refugees and should appropriately be dealt in GCR.
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• In this regard it would be pertinent to refer to the Amatuku Declaration on Climate Change and Oceans by Polynesian Leaders Group as the outcome of the meeting held in Tuvalu on 28-29 June 2018. The declaration notes with concern that people who are displaced by climate change events and who are forced to cross national borders are not defined as refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention.
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• At the Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held last week in Mongolia, there was recognition that the forced displacements taking place due to sudden-onset disasters are internal and within their own countries.
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• A recent World Bank report also projects the scope of displacement within national boundaries to escape slow-onset impacts of climate change.
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• It is significant to note that movements due to climate and environmental degradation as also sudden onset of natural disasters are referred to in the Final Draft of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR). Paragraph 8 of the GCR draft says “While not in themselves causes of refugee movements, climate, environmental degradation and natural disasters increasingly interact with the drivers of refugee movements”.
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• We believe that the sudden-onset related displacements are humanitarian emergencies and should be dealt accordingly. Slow-onset related displacements need to be studied with more data, evidence and rigor and eventually be dealt under the GCR.

Co-Facilitators,

• To conclude, we would like to re-emphasize that migration is a longstanding and positive phenomenon across the globe.
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• Today’s knowledge and innovation-driven economies require mobility of persons just as the modern economy is built upon movement of capital, goods and services across borders.
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• Our Global Compact must reflect and reinforce this reality. While a humane treatment of irregular migrants is absolutely essential, it is also important to not let the focus on regular migrants and their contributions be diluted in the Global Compact that we are working on.
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• India will continue to engage in this process actively with you and all our partners to work towards a positive narrative and a constructive outcome that will help create better conditions for safe, orderly and regular migration in our collective interest.
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• We look forward to the finalisation of a balanced Global Compact on Migration later this week .
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Thank  You.