 Without much ado, I'll call on our Director General to come up and we'll start the program on the agenda. So welcome to all of our colleagues in the field. We're delighted and honored to have you here. Just a couple brief words before we go into the agenda, the agenda itself. Well, when I arrived here in, gosh, almost 10 years ago in 2008, I imposed upon you and this organization something known in New England as the Town Hall Meeting when the town gathers. And we're kind of like a big town or big village or family. And the idea was something that I began to use when I first became an ambassador in 1979, 40 years ago. And I continue to use it as a means of strengthening internal communication. I'm afraid that we've tended to set the agenda from the executive office rather than getting input from you. And I don't know whether you or we are to blame for that, but if this continues, it should be then improved. But here we have, I think, averaged about once every four months. Could have done it more often. We did do it more often when it was required, when you had a Christ. Is that particularly important then? So I hope that you found these town hall meetings useful. In any case, this will be the last town hall meeting that will be held during my mandate. And I look forward to a good discussion today. So I think we should go to the first agenda item, which is the update on the global compact on migration. So I think we have a bit of a slide program, which I will speak to. So, first of all, let us say that we warmly welcome in Iowa the completion of the negotiations on the global compact for safe early and regular migration in New York on the 13th of July this year. This brought to an end largely 2017 consultations and a stock taking exercise in Mexico. It brought to an end negotiations between February and July. And so I wanted to say that we should all welcome this and it will be our responsibility now to make it work. I particularly would like to commend the permanent representatives in New York to the UN from both Mexico and Switzerland. They did a terrific job under difficult and challenging circumstances, but also commend the special representative of the secretary general for international migration, Ms. Louise Arbor, who a lot of you will remember from her time here as the High Commissioner for the Human Rights. I want to remind everyone that this text did take quite a while to happen, and it will be presented for adoption at an intergovernmental conference to be held at Marrakesh, in Morocco in all the 10th through the last of December being convened at the highest political level preceded by or followed by, I don't remember which preceded by a global formal migration. But I was joking with the Moroccan ambassador the other night at a nice dinner that he did for my wife and myself that they planned it perfectly. So the weekend you can spend all your money in the souk, the wonderful souks in Marrakesh. So let me say two things about this and I'll use words that I don't like to use because they're threadbare. First of all, this is a truly historic accomplishment. It's also remarkable. It's historic because it's the first time ever that the heads of state had come together at the United Nations General Assembly to agree to negotiate anything on migration. And this is very important. Secondly, it's remarkable because these two co-facilitators and the special representative were able to negotiate in the middle of a very poisonous atmosphere. Many of you last heard something good about migrants recently. They're deciding elections and determining the makeup of coalitions. So this is really remarkable. Therefore we have to give it our best. It recognizes that we all have a shared responsibility for people on the move. It's an opportunity to improve the governance of migration at an international and domestic level. It helps us to draw the benefits of migrants and migration for all of our countries and our peoples. The compact doesn't encourage migration and it doesn't aim to suck it. Migration is as old as humankind. People have always been on the move. They always will be on the move. And so we don't have to encourage it. It happens naturally and we don't want to try to stop it either. We do want to reduce the number of people who are forced to migrate. It fully respects the sovereignty of countries and it is not legally binding. Therefore we're going to have to have some kind of a review process to make sure that we are in fact leading up to the serious commitments that we made. It will be a blueprint for how states can really best manage or govern migration. It then gives plenty of space and flexibility to countries to do so on the basis of how they assess their own migration of realities. And how they assess their own national interests. It's got 23 objectives, a 360 degree approach. And it's basically aimed at making human mobility a choice and not a necessity. But the momentum has to be maintained and we will be helping with that in the days ahead. It's going to be a very quick start on the 1st of October. So we're starting preparing now for implementation of Global Compact. We hope that governments will come to Marrakech with their own ideas, their own concrete suggestions, examples of good practices, as well as pledges and commitments. So we'll do all this in spirit of partnership and our message today is partnership and cooperation at all levels. Secretary General of the United Nations has given IOM a very important responsibility and a very important task and opportunity by naming us to be the coordinator for the Global Compact on Migration and also to be the secretary. So I bring through then to the point of the UN migration network, which the Secretary General, I think it was first established on 23 May of this year. I mean you can say if you will it replaces the global migration group, but that would be a disservice to the network. It goes well beyond the GMG because the GMG was largely a disappointment, if not, I won't call it a failure, it was a disappointment. And so this is good. There's going to be a preliminary meeting of a small number of agencies, essentially those I think who signed the New York Declaration Group. They'll meet here on the 15th and 16th of October at what's called a framing conference. It will gather around 30 UN agencies and departments and it will be based here in Geneva, which is good because it moves migration, it migrates migration back to Geneva because it needs to get out of political New York and back to humanitarian Geneva. So that's kind of the way it's going to happen. And that will be an informal group of 22 agencies working on migration, which is the GMG, which will cease to exist in October because essentially there aren't that many agencies who really have a genuine interest in migration. So the establishment of the network will give us an unprecedented opportunity in the international community to strengthen cooperation on migration. It will bring us in line with the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and I think it's going to be a major, major opportunity and a major risk force. And I will say a bit later when I have an opportunity that I leave Iowa basically very, very reassured about your future. But there are some underlying concerns and one is how are we going to do the global compact at the same time maintain our operational, projectized nature. We have to bring that together in a manner that both moves this organization forward while maintaining its essential characteristics, but also allows us to show within the UN that we can take leadership on this question and that we will use it to weave ourselves into the fabric of this very complicated UN system. So I think I've said too much already. I should probably sit down now. Is that the idea? Yeah, I think so. And I'm going to turn it over to Michael to give you the floor. I want to highlight just a few things that we've been working on in the course of 2018 and start with a very important development which happened in July, which was the launch of the new competency framework. Now those of you who take any sort of interest in human resources know that the competency framework is the bedrock of what we do in human resources. And you'll see a number of new tools that are aligned to this coming out in the course of 2019. We also have launched or are about to launch a number of very, very important policies. There's one on internship coming out, one on use of retirees, one on performance management coming. And there's also, we hope, a bit of a rethink of rotation. Now that doesn't mean that the rotation system will change dramatically, but it means that we're looking at how it can be improved and how it can better serve the interest of the organization. There's also some exciting developments from a system perspective, a UN system perspective. One of these is the launch of the activities of the duty of care task force as a system saying we need to do a better job of looking after our staff and particularly our staff in deep field duty stations. And during the course of 2019, our role in human resources and as chief submissions and as leaders in the organization is to realize these recommendations so that we're very serious about having a duty of care for our staff. Now inextricably linked with that is also another interagency task force on mental health. And again, this is an area that is woefully under resourced and under recognized in the UN system. At one point it was estimated that around one-third of UN staff will at some point in their life suffer from one of four identical mental health issues. And that's a pretty high figure and yet as a system we are very under-equipped to deal with that. We as an IOM, Anna and myself had the opportunity to brief the Secretary-General last week and his senior management group. He was very excited about it and we now have been invited onto the board to make sure that the recommendations that come out of that strategy are implemented during the course of 2019 and beyond. So that's exciting. Now, there's also a few things on the horizon. I mean when you come back into an organization after six years you look at things through a little bit of a different lens and I've had the privilege to be able to do that. And I'd like to just detail a couple of priorities that I've seen for 2019. One is I think we need to have a look at our recruitment processes and practices and make sure that they find the right balance between transparency, objectivity, but also agility as well. That means that we will be asking everybody around the world to have their input into that. What I'm very keen on is for people to tell me what it is to be an IOMer. What is it to work for IOM? What is it about IOM that gets in your blood that's in your DNA? And I want that passion to come out because I want that to be reflected in the people's strategy going forward. We also will be continuing to roll out the unified staff rules and regulations. We've done 111 countries already. We'll probably do another 25 or so during the course of 2019 and that will lead us 20 or so countries to do going forward in 2020. There's also, I think, a renewed emphasis on genuine succession planning and particularly for the core decisions that are important for this organisation and by core positions, I mean the chief submissions, the RMOs and other positions that are geographically replicable. And I hope during the course of the next three months to table an initiative that will be a pretty important initiative in terms of identifying an unearthing talent in IOM at the margins of the workforce. Just to finish off with, we're also rolling out Eve which is the Entitlement Validation Engine. That doesn't sound very exciting for most people in the room but it's actually in terms of having a HR architecture where we can mitigate against risk, etc. That's very important and that will go ahead during the large part of 2019 so we're excited about that as well. Now I know there's time for questions at the end of the presentations and in my experience, most of the questions tend to relate to human resources so I'll be on standby to answer any of those questions. Did you want to come back and say some words before we show room? We also have a little surprise after your work four weeks ago. We've had too many surprises in our life by the way. Please let me know if you can not hear me. Please tell me. Is that better? I think those of you who know me know that I generally like to make three points and I have none. And you also recall that I like alliteration. When my wife and I were sitting in Malaysia between the election and the first of October, I had a lot of time to think and I knew nothing about migration. I still don't know that much but I came up with the thought of the three B's that you know by heart now. Professionalism, because I thought we could probably do more in this area and grateful to H.R. for having done a lot of the training side there. And the various department heads that brought RTSs and others back. Specialists do get to know another better man to build their expertise. We had another one called partnerships. And again I think you've done a terrific job in increasing the number of partners we have. It'd be even more important now if the global compact. So I would hope that we keep pushing to get more partnerships. And the third was something I called proprietorship which basically meant member state ownership of the organization. And it's frankly due to that that we got the two committees, the IOM budget reform committee that got a three year budget increase 4% each year. We have to go back to now say we need another one. But it also is thanks to the commission that the member states themselves created that we're now members of the UN. This is not my doing. You all gave it a lot of support. It's basically what's the member state decision. I also, after my reelection in 2013, I gave you the three Cs. Continuity because so much of what we do is exactly right. Exactly what we should be doing. We need to continue. There's also the L.C. which is coherence. And that becomes even more important now that we're in the UN to be coherently working within the system and the global compact will make that very clear. And then the third one was change. And I've tried to make as little change as possible since the election of the new director general because I think I should leave that to him to give him a clean slate from which to start. Today I have very, very briefly three A's. The first one is appreciation. I know I was very heavily criticized at the beginning because I was traveling too much. And I thought about it long and hard. And I said, look, we have 14,000 people in nearly 500 places around the world. How can I sit in beautiful Geneva and do my job? And so I've continued to spend about 56% of my time on the road, so to speak. But even the list today of the 21 missions who joined us, there's six I've never been to. So one of my many short films. But I always, when I go to these posts, the first thing I do is ask for a town hall meeting to thank everyone, to thank you today, all of you here gathered in headquarters, all of you in the 21 missions, all beyond the work that you do every day. When I was a candidate, I would go around and call on IOM officers. I couldn't understand it. People are so enthusiastic. They're working so hard. They're not getting rich. They're doing okay. They're not getting rich. And I realized after I came down to him, it was the importance of the issues, the richness of the narrative that kept people working. When I was a peacekeeping mission in Congo, we had 17,000 drew 5,000 police, a couple thousand, I'm sorry, 5,000 civilians and 2,000 police. And I was still, in my last days there after five years, still recovering little nooks and crannies where people were working away with no supervision, doing a good job. So it's inspirational to me. And I wanted to, first of all, use this occasion, or last time, I'll be to thank everyone, if I haven't been able to say it to you personally. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all of you. So I'm very, very proud of all of you. We will, I must also say to, pardon me for the personal reference, but I want to thank most especially my wife, Healy. She has been the sort of, I could say the way in being my sales. She's also brought me back down to earth. She's really done this in partnership and she's put up with all sorts of crazy things. I want to go off and do peacekeeping for a decade, through Sahara, then to the Congo. And she put it up, put it up for seven years, you know, once or twice a year. So I were a great devigratitude. My second point is with achievements, and I can't get very, I can't speak very long in this subject, because the list is far too long. But you have done amazing things in these 10 years. Achievements in every aspect of migration. And there are many more to come. The growth of the organization. We've now gone from what? 8,000 maybe to 14,000 county parking spots and contractors. We have expanded the membership from about 125 to 172. And you will go on to get universal membership, maybe beyond 193, where only 21 shy down. We have the record of having the most, the highest percentage of people in the field of any other UN agency, which is, I think, fantastic. That's the way we want to keep it. Because it is in the field that the work really gets done. We're here to support the field, not the other way around. According to the director of ICP, I asked the research informant, we're about number five or six in terms of staff among the UN agencies, of which are about, I think, 44 at last count. We are about number eight or nine in terms of budget. We would have been hired this year, except for reductions in the refugee program. We were hit to the head mark for the first time. And we are number one in terms of percentage of staff in the field. We are older than somewhere between a half and two-thirds of UN agencies, 1951. So that's something we can be proud of. The global compact is, I think, an achievement for which IOM can at least take some credit. And we built this up over the years with the various reasonable and substantive processes, in which we're about 23 now. We've helped build it up through the burn initiative, through the international dialogue on migration, and other things that has brought us to this point, that people had a foundation on which to establish the global compact. Merchancies and crises, we're managing probably a dozen from West Africa to the Bay of Bengal, and doing it very professionally. Dozen armed conflicts, natural disasters, public health outbreaks. What you all did for Ebola. I sent 150 to 200 people to Liberia, Sarah, Leona, and Guinea without any extra insurance. And the Ebola's a killer. So you might just crowd again. And there's so many others, and I'm sorry, I didn't get your favorite or particular achievements that you wanted me to talk about, but I wanted to give some illustrations. And the innovations. The IMCOF, the MyGov, the MiGAP, the Global Film Festival, all sorts of things, and you all continue. You've got really very good animators. And then the third, I guess, under appreciation, I could also have said apologies, because I really do regret my shortcomings and my failures, which some of which will be discovered only by the new administration, unfortunately. But I guess it's in the nature of being human, and I followed that to shoot something. And I also, as I got older, I became more lazy. I used to have something which I used all my career called MBWA management by walking around. I don't do much of that anymore. I don't do lunches. I don't do receptions. We did so many as a ambassador that we kind of got out of that. But my third point would be aspirations. I hope you'll continue to take an aspirational approach through your work, that there's a lot more out there that can be done. So how do we wed together the management of the global compact and protecting our essential characteristics and our operational ability and our projectiles nature in that regard? How do we maintain IOM's familial atmosphere? How do we integrate ourselves into the UN in the most effective way, keeping our operational capacity and projectiles nature? At the same time, how do we begin to increase core funding if we don't have much walking around money for special occasions? How do we get to universal membership? How do we strengthen the nexus between humanitarian work and development? And then, of course, the challenge is that really a way is trying to help governments to change the negative migration narrative. How to get serious about the challenge of inexorably growing cultural, ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity? And how do we begin to address the demographic challenge of these opponents? In conclusion, I always think of departures and opening your chapters of... It's like running a relay race. You run your lap. You try to pass the baton without dropping it. Or it's like actors on stage. You're actors on stage for a short while. You do what you can. You hope somebody... Did you play a good Hamlet? A terrible Hamlet? Or more importantly, does anybody even remember you play Hamlet? So, with those over the long remarks, let me sit down and thank you again for all you've done. And let's have a glass of applause to thank everybody. Thank you. I want to share with you this little surprise to say thank you. And it's a collective effort. So I think if we can go ahead and enjoy it. On behalf of IOM Turkey, I'd like to thank you for unwavering support and encouragement which made us one of the largest missions in IOM. We love you, sir! All the best from Ukraine! May you be blessed in Ukraine! On behalf of IOM Somalia, thank you! We were proud to receive you and Mrs. Swing at IOM Sri Lanka and Maldives. And be assured that as we continue on this migration journey, your wisdom will stay with us. He's leaving us with three honorable elves. As a legendary director general, his lasting legacy, the third elf is he's leaving with love from all of us. From all of us here in IOM London, we will miss you! We did it, Swing! Thank you forever! Thank you for your leadership, guidance and support over the years. We're going to miss you very much. I want you to know that you will always be welcome here. IOM! Points, hydration, ease, vital, visionary, and valued. Life, power, DG. On behalf of IOM IED, we wish you the best of luck and great retirement. Thank you so much for your service. With your advice and IOM, I am breaking barriers in Bangladesh. Thanks! Four, four, two, hug, dance, party, best, warmth, wishes, I am no way! Best wishes from Australia. Buona Swerve! Bunches! Cecily! Namuay Pappalainka! Ambani Kahe! Cheers, man! Trustworthy! Proactive, dedicated, unstoppable, inspiring, kind. Another DG! Salute to you, we are all swing! GGG! Le Le Le! We are Chile! On behalf of IOM in Indonesia, from the integration liaison office in Canada, Jaya Pura District, from IOM, support please! From Sri Lanka! From Tangera! From Ayaman Tajum Vinay! From India! What will remain with me most is the DG's commitment to the idea of service, and that we have a debt of gratitude for our privileged positions as officials of my way. 1,100 sub-members will continue with your legacy. Happy retirement! Best of luck, as you might break into retirement! We would like to thank you for your leadership and experience, hard work, your support, generosity, your vision, charisma, for your kindness, your patience. Thank you for all your support during these years, and particularly, for leading by example. Alma, Johanna, Juntina, our best wishes for the future. Our organization throughout all these years, we wish you nothing but the best for what's next to come. We wish you the best from Borengi, more because I challenge. Your team in Azerbaijan would like to thank you for your continuous encouragement over the years. Thanks to your leadership qualities, IOM earned greater than ever respect in the country. It's my home country. I'm so happy to be here. Our work here in Germany in the last years, we wish you the best wishes for our home country in the real journey. Much for being our director general, for the last 10 years, we have seen a lot of expansion in humanitarian activity and also KCEA. Alas, a man would not have studied the sheep as easily as we have done. Thank you for your service, sir, and all the best. Your leadership and your energy have been an inspiration for all of us. Your 10 years term really raised the bar in the leadership of Iowa. From Iowa in Mexico, we wish you the best in all your future endeavors. I am Egypt in the MENA region. Thank you for your support. We hope you will enjoy the pleasures which I can offer. We list them under the letter F for easy memory. It has been a rewarding experience working under your leadership all these years. We wish you all the best and we hope to maintain a warm friendship. Thank you very well and warmest wishes from the Iowa team in sunny Malta. Saha, Chris. Uswe. Thank you for your quick response for visiting us in Habitat 3 and for all the selfies. Iowa in today stands taller and sees further because it stands on the shoulders of the giant. During your visits you were able to provide concrete recommendations in a way that will support the best interest of migrants and maintain their humanity. You have inspired us. You have transmitted your vision and paved the way on how to help those in real need. Thank you. We were very impressed by your energy and friendship having overnight flight from Japan and being ready for all-day meetings. In all your future endeavors your role model for all of us. You truly inspire us. We miss you. We miss you. We will miss you. Thank you for your dedication over the many years and wish you all the best. Salaam alaikum. This is the opportunity that you have given to us and to say that we are working hard to help you in the future. Thank you, DG, for all these years. Your impeccable work ethics and your outstanding results will forever inspire the future generations of Iowaners. From all of us in Tirana, Albania and amazing and fruitful years all best wishes. Thank you. On behalf of MAC and all the staff Bon Continuation. Thank you for all the valuable years of visionary leadership and transformation. Best wishes for the future. IOM's work in supporting IDPs, refugees and migrants in crisis contexts has increased tremendously under your channel. Thank you for 10 years of your leadership guidance and support. I wish you and you all the best for the future. It was an absolutely amazing experience working with you. You will always be a great role model for me. One of the greatest director generals of IOM and a great friend, a true gentleman, a great human being. Good luck, Bill with your well-earned retirement.