UN talks eyeing deal for migrants

Chief Migration Officer Solomon Kantha has told the United Nations that the development of a global compact for migration can offer indirect and direct benefits to PNG.
Kantha, who was a the United Nations headquarters at New York, in the United States, said that the global compact for migration when finalised and adopted will be
the first inter-governmental negotiated agreement to cover all dimensions of international migration.
“With a broad range of objectives to promote safe, orderly and regular migration, the draft compact proposes actionable commitments in areas such as combating the trafficking and exploitation of migrants, collection of data on migrants and how migration should provide solutions for those impacted by environmental and climate change,” Kantha said in a statement. He said the PNG delegation used the meeting with the UN to ensure that as the compact was progressed, migration-based solutions would be at the forefront of global and regional responses to those impacted by climate change.
He also used the meetings to further the position of nations who have trouble returning persons with no right to remain in the countries that they had entered.
Once completed, the ratification of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is designed to occur at a Heads of State meeting scheduled for Morocco in December 2018.
Recognising the importance of the meetings, Minister for Immigration and Border Security Petrus Thomas tasked Kantha to travel to New York to participate in the development of a Global Compact for Migration. Working in partnership with PNG’s permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Max Rai, Kantha presented the government’s position in relation to the proposed agreement and recommended a series of changes to the document that will bring effectiveness and practicality to the complex challenges posed by regulating migration across the globe.