 We have seen some dark days in our world this year. In 2015, we have witnessed acts of sickening violence, the fury of nature, and perhaps most poignant of all, the corpse of the baby boy, Ilan Kurdi, face down on the Mediterranean beach, one of many thousands of migrants who died along the way to a new life. But while the world is full of darkness, it is not surprising that so many cultures have created festivals of light. For example, Hindus recently celebrated Diwali, and last month was Loy Kratong in Southeast Asia, where candles were afloat to offer thanks. Soon it will be the holiday season for much of the Western world. There again, lights are already twinkling everywhere from Central Park to Bundy Beach. In Ireland, a nation which fled poverty, war, and famine, there is a tradition of placing a candle in the window during the holiday season to remember the immigrants who now live far away. It is ironic, perhaps, that this tradition is now so apt as families from the Middle East still seek a safe haven. As an issue, migration defined the year 2015. It was the year of the migrant. It was a year of mass and rapid population movement, a typhoon in the Banuatu, an earthquake in Nepal, a war in Syria, abuse in a number of other countries, with some one million migrants arriving by boat in Europe, fleeing war, poverty, persecution. The world was in foment and flux from the mountains to the deserts to the oceans. In an ignorant panic, sections of media and society have sought to paint migration as a social evil, a divider of families and communities, a spawning ground for fanaticism. For the first time in many decades of watching, commenting, and leading thought on migration, I, for one, have begun to worry. I see an anti-migrant sentiment beginning to see. I see political malaise, an absence of courage, leadership, and a paucity of moral sensitivity. I see a one-sided debate focusing on fear, negativity, and security. Where are the smiles of welcome from last summer? Where are the banners and football grounds declaring migrants welcome? I know they're there, and I know they will be seen again. When we gather in cities and towns across the globe with candles of solidarity, common sense and generosity of ordinary people, of communities made up of migrants and non-migrants, people of all shades of color, politics, and piety, that is what sustains me. I truly believe that communities will continue to open their hearts and arms to embrace the tired and the oppressed, while some national leaders may cavill. The United Nations, informed by a global grassroots debate, has drawn a line under the importance of migration in its blueprint for human development over the next 15 years. The sustainable development goes, agenda 2030. Migration is now firmly on the global agenda. The first United Nations side event on migration took place this year, led by the Secretary General himself. The summit in Malta in November brought African and European leaders together for the first time around the issue of migration. In Asia, governments have gathered to seek a regional solution to their migration crisis in the Andaman Sea. Canada's new government has sounded a clarion call accepting 25,000 Syrian refugees in a rapid, regulated, and welcome mass intake. I have often described our time as a perfect storm of humanitarian emergencies, which feature in today's unprecedented human mobility. Almost one out of every seven persons on this earth, more than one billion people, in some way are migrants, but almost 60 million of these are what we call desperation migrants or distress migrants, forcibly removed from their homes and the places they grew up. Missions of others are migrants seeking opportunity in other countries or elsewhere within their own countries, just as any one of us would. It has simply become convenient for many to use the fear of terrorism as an excuse to do nothing to help these folks. This disartens me, but now is the time for safe, secure, and legal migration throughout the world. Many have been arguing for a long time that to address the issues around human mobility, we require the management of migration with security for all involved. We must recognize that migration is the mega trend of our time and we need to treat it with seriousness, not smears if we're going to get anywhere. Migrants are moving and we need them just as much as they need us, but the world needs leadership in order to manage it in a safe, secure, and legal manner. It's high time for mature societies to show that they'll do what it takes for the marriage to work. So yes, there is darkness, but we all have a little light if it was shone before, let it shine again and keep shining.