 We find ourselves here today on the International Day of Migrants. You've seen a number of statements on that particular issue, particularly Poignet Day, to be spending it in Ireland, whose people's collective memory of migration and the human cost of migration and human mobility brings us to the current period of what I would call desperation migration or some other term, but basically we call it also survival migration. I remind this of the recent drownings off the Mediterranean shores of Lampedusa, Malta. It's all the more relevant and demanding there for me to speak to you today about the imperative for global efforts to reduce the terrible human cost of migration. There is what we call today the globalization of indifference, which is basically what we're talking about. When I met with Pope Francis on the 14th of October, our discussion, he had just come back from Lampedusa and I congratulated him on being the first pope to go to Lampedusa and told him I was going the next day and he was very stern with me, he said, and you make sure you speak to the migrants, because there had been a European Union delegation went down and weren't going to speak to the migrants and he wanted to make sure I did. I said, I have every intention of doing it. I saw him subsequently and he was just as passionate and just as engaged and committed to the issue of migrants and all vulnerable people, but migrants are among the most vulnerable. So I would like just to provide a very brief scene setter and then to make three points with you. As far as setting the scene, I would say three things. First of all, we're living in a period of the greatest human mobility in recorded history. You have 232 million persons living outside of their native country crossing international borders and you have 740 domestic migrants turning within their own country. Every time I go to China, the figure goes up. Last year the foreign minister told me there are now more than 200 internal domestic Chinese migrants largely moving from the rural western areas to the affluent coastal cities, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong. The drivers of this are very obvious. The 20th century was the first time in recorded history that the world's population quadrupled. Never happened before, unlikely to happen again, and I won't be around to be proved wrong. But it's the demographic that's driving it. It's also the digital revolution. You had 300 million people connected to the internet in 2000. Today it's 2 billion. If you listen to Martin Zuckerberg, it's going to be 7 billion soon. In any case, more and more connectivity, more and more instant information. So people know what's going on. It's being driven by demand for labor. It's being driven by distance shrinking technology. And unfortunately it's being driven by disasters. So that brings me to my second point. We're living in a period of unprecedented, multiple, complex disasters. I've just come back from Philippines, from Tokloban and Rojas and other areas that were destroyed by the super typhoon. I've just come back from the Syrian border, where we've transported 400,000 refugees from the Syrian border into the camps in Jordan. After dealing with the crisis in Mali, we have another one in South Sudan, Somalia continues. We've rarely had so many multiple, complex emergencies that we have today. And then there are the political emergencies, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Mali, now the Central African Republic. I said to someone the other day, if you want to see where the next crisis is going to break out, go look at my assignment history. I've served in the C.A.R. also, as well as the Congo. The result is there are high levels of forced migration. People are not choosing to move, but who have to move. Third point under my scene setter is that it is an era of unprecedented anti-migrant sentiment. And it's rather, it's a kind of a cruel irony that in a period when you have more people on the move than ever before, you have an anti-migrant, almost anti-foreign sentiment that is widespread, particularly in the industrialized world, where these migrants are going to be needed. Europe by the mid-century is going to need tens of millions of workers they won't have. You've got a negative replacement layer. More people dying than being born. Immigration is actually shrinking, including Japan and Korea. Immigration countries like my own have a somewhat higher birth rate and because of a large migration policy are doing okay, but they are just barely above the replacement level. These migrants, if they comprise themselves as a country, would be the sixth largest country in the world. Would be slightly smaller than Indonesia, slightly larger than Brazil. Their remittances in excess of $400 billion would be roughly the GDP of Saudi Arabia or a middle-sized income country, middle-sized economy in the European Union. So we're talking a major, major movement, which I call a megatrend of the 21st century. So this is where we stand. One billion of seven billion people in the world, one in every seven, person being a migrant or someone on the move. Many millions more are directly affected by migration, by the money sent home, or by the people left behind. And yet demographic shifts and labor market transformation will lead to an increased need to match people with jobs at all skill levels. So states increasingly agree on the need for a global approach. There was a remarkable degree of convergence at the high-level dialogue that was held third and fourth of October. The reasons are very simple. We find ourselves all in the same boat, or maybe that's not a good analogy to use given the tragedy in the Mediterranean. But we're basically linked up together. So I want to make just a couple more points. The main thing is the scene-setter as to where we are right now. And the migration megatrend is simply too important to be neglected by development policy makers. The global nature of migration clearly requires a global response. I want to come to the high-level dialogue. I don't think all of you realize that the first time that the United Nations General Assembly ever discussed migration as an issue was in the year 2006. And a large part of the credit to what came out of that goes to Peter Sutherland. Migration and migrants have no greater friend than Mr. Sutherland, nor IOM for that matter. It's been extremely supportive of us and extremely supportive of all of the conventions of the ILO trying to do something about domestic workers and others. Simple conventions that should be subscribed to by everybody, but haven't been. Because we're not yet understood behind these statistics are a lot of people, faces, human beings who, like all of us, if they are properly welcome and given a chance to integrate, are going to make their contribution. That will be a greater contribution to some of those native born. We have to try to destroy the mythology that surrounds migrants. Mythology, what are the myths are? Number one, they're coming to take our jobs. Number two, they're probably bringing in disease. Number three, they probably have a higher rate of criminality. None of this can be proved statistically, but it's mythology and stereotypes that keep us from seeing these people as friends who are going to make contributions to our economies and to our societies. So the second United Nations high level dialogue was held then on the third and fourth of October this year, that this was only the second time that the UN General Assembly had discussed it, is itself quite remarkable. We took stock of the progress since the first high level dialogue in 2006. And I think, Peter, as a good CEO, basically saying, we need an outcome. We need a result. And kind of at the end of this, basically came up with this idea of a global forum. And this was the missing piece in the Mosaic of migration. We had a lot of regional discussions, but no one was talking about migration at a global level. And also, as former head of WTO and the GATT, we know that we talk about the free movement of capital goods and services. Something missing. People. What about the free movement of people? That's what makes it all happen. I'm not arguing a borderless world. I'm arguing for rationality and sensible, humane treatment of people on the move. So I would simply say that your role in the creation and the evolution of the global forum has been absolutely vital and indispensable. This informal approach to consensus building has helped governments to see that it is possible to discuss a highly political issue. It's highly political, as you know, you're following it in the news. To be able to discuss it and to come up with ways in which we could collaborate more effectively on improving the quality of migration. And that this collaboration does not undermine national sovereignty. Now, I believe firmly that national policies on migration are always going to be a difficult balancing act. How are you going to somehow the negotiate between national sovereignty and individual freedom? This is it. Bringing those two together in your policy. How skillfully you can bring those two together will determine how effective your policies are going to be. So the General Assembly adopted a declaration in October. It called on all relevant UN entities, our organization, IOM, the global migration group of 16 UN agencies in IOM, and the special representative of Secretary General to strengthen collaboration and cooperation within our respective mandates. It also reflected clear progress in addressing migration as a global phenomenon, particularly in the Secretary General's recommendations. Now, it's remarkable that the Secretary General's eight points, the six points that we had at IOM, the five or six points that the global migration group had, and the objectives and points of the civil society, all sort of converged into four or five things. First of all, there was a recognition that much more needs to be done to protect the human rights of migrants. Secondly, we must find a way to lower the costs of migration, particularly the excessive and unscrupulous remittance transfer and recruitment fees. We have recruitment agencies that are charging migrants the first year of salary to find them a job. That is not proper. We have recruitment agencies that will tell a young woman, you're going into a nice household as a domestic. You arrive, passport taken away, you go in a prostitution ring. These kinds of practices have to stop. Paying 10 to 15% to send your money home is also not fair. If you have $400 billion in remittance going home and 10% of it, 40 billion goes to the bank or the transfer agency, that's probably not fair either. The third point was, we have to find a way to end human trafficking and smuggling of persons in all other forms of exploitation to which migrants are vulnerable. When I was in Lampedusa and later in Malta, I interviewed Eritreans, Somalis, Nigerians, Syrians and others. It was a very mixed flow. The Eritreans were, almost all of them, probably had some claim to protection, international protection. Some of the others, the Syrians simply wanted to go north to join their family, many of them in Sweden. The Nigerian young women I interviewed, Larsi had been trafficked, probably trafficked into prostitution rings. They needed to be given assistance to go back home. But if they die in the Mediterranean or the Red Sea or the Indian Ocean or the Caribbean, when I was Ambassador to Haiti, the problems of Haitians trying to get to Miami and shaky boats, then there's no need to have these other options. They'll never have a chance to exercise it. So we have to work to end trafficking and smuggling. Then we have to address the plight of stranded migrants. And again, I'd like to recognize Peter Sutherland's leadership on this issue. He's now got a program going, I think a pilot project with the governments of the Philippines and the United States, an initiative in which we have offered our technical expertise to identify some concrete operational measures. How do we help migrants in crisis? The Libyan crisis, with our traditional partner UNHCR, IOM took home 229,000 migrant workers who were stranded there to 54 countries. Now, we didn't do the job very well. Took 177,000 back to the Sahil. There are nine countries in the Sahil. But primarily we took them to Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Shad, and the northern part of Nigeria. Now, we dropped them off and wished them good luck. There were no jobs because that's why they were at the Libyan to start with. By definition, no more remittances. The schools and the clinics were not adequate to help them. So we have to do better in the future. We have to be much more coordinated and linked up with everybody so that there is a sustaining quality to what we do. Another thing on which remarkably all countries agreed, we have to work to improve the public perception of migrants, to show the contributions that migrants make, that they do contribute to our societies and our economies. We'll be launching a global information campaign this coming year to try to portray a more accurate picture of the contributions that migrants may make. And I think I can say, and I think it can be proved, that migrants in migration, historically, have been overwhelmingly positive in their contributions. And then another area we all agreed on was, we need to integrate migration into the development agenda. It's remarkable that in the year 2000, when the Millennium Development Goals were developed, there was not one mention of migration or population displacement. We want to make sure they get into the sustainable development goals in the post-2015 development agenda. We also agreed we need to strengthen the migrant evidence base for our policies, and we need to enhance our partnerships and our cooperation. Now, unfortunately, the Declaration did not establish any kind of a follow-up mechanism. We have to work on that. But meanwhile, we are going ahead, full bore, trying to follow up on our own. This is some of the initiatives I've announced to you already. We will be doing that. We'll be addressing these directly. We have submitted our recommendations to the European Union for this Task Force on the Mediterranean, a number of recommendations that we hope will be helpful to them in their deliberations, but do not believe that the boats will stop coming. They won't. There'll be a law in the winter, of course, that the boats will still be coming, because there is this disparity north-south, and aging north is getting smaller, and in need of jobs, and a youthful south with a very slow, stagnant rate of job creation will be coming north. They won't look like us maybe. They may not speak as we do, but if they're properly welcomed and given a chance to integrate, they'll make their contribution. So let me quickly move to my final point here. So that we can get to the discussion. I've introduced already the issue of the post-2015 UN development agenda, trying to make the point that migration and development need to be included there. We're all working hard at that, but there is no guarantee it will make it given the competition of others there. The business case is very clear that the benefits of migration are comparable to other elements being proposed for the development agenda. We need to lower the costs and barriers of mobility while upholding the dignity and human rights of migrants. We need to increase investment possibilities for the diaspora. We will be holding in this connection a major global conference in 2015 on the subject of migrants and cities. We need to examine together the dynamic. And this is pitched at the level of mayor and city council, because that's often where the problem occurs. We need to understand better, what is the effect of migrants on cities and what's the effect of cities on migrants, many from come from rural areas? We need to examine that and say, how can we do it better? Because clearly it's not always working as it really should. We need more partnerships in this regard. So I'm quite sure that we can make progress in the coming year on all of the issues that this declaration, which is quite remarkable for the degree of convergence, which was not there in 2006, except agreement on the Global Forum. But I think it shows you the progress that has been made under the Global Forum. So again, the special representative, Secretary General of Sutherland, is now working on the question of supporting the states in the open working group, formulating these sustainable development goals. And in particular, leading his leading, the informal group's contributions on recommendations for specific targets and goals. Let me quickly now come to a conclusion, because I think we want to leave some time for discussion. I'll close by saying that we need to be developing what I call a high road scenario. We've been on the low road for a long time. That's why things aren't going well. That's why people are losing lives. That's why we're sometimes working across purposes, even with our own national interests. So we shouldn't wait for El Dorado or Nirvana or the ideal state of affairs in terms of global governance. We have to work away every day at simple things that we can do. We need to adopt a number of elements of a high road scenario. I don't say you can't prescribe to you what a government should do. But some of them would be to have a single government entity in charge of migration that would bring together all the ministries and departments of a government who have something to do with migration. Because if you turn it over to the Ministry of the Interior, it'll all be about police and borders and you leave out human rights. You leave out relations with the countries these people come from. But if you bring it all together under single entity coordinated, similarly a whole of society approach, bring in civil society. Another element of a high road scenario would be to decriminalize irregular migrants. They're not criminals. They don't have proper papers. But they're human beings. They have rights, just like someone with proper papers. We need to assist migrants in crisis, including through such programs as assisted voluntary return and reintegration, rights-based alternatives to deportation. We need to make sure that we open up the process for legal status for those who meet state criteria. We need to make integration available as an option, a two-way assisted process. Probably should be looking at multiple entry visas. If you wonder why people overstay their visas, usually go that one entry. Not going to leave. Maybe I can't get back in. Multiple entry. We live in, we have multiple identities these days. My family's living on four continents. I'm in Geneva. My wife, half the time, is in Malaysia. She's from there. My son has been for 20 years in Cape Town. He has good taste, beautiful city. And my daughter is in Afghanistan. She's been for the last two years with the UN Peacekeeping Force. So this is more the norm than the exception today. But our policies haven't caught up with the realities that we face. So multiple entry visas. Very touchy as she possibly duels citizenship laws. That's a possibility for a government to look at. Certainly portable social security benefits. The old days in my country, if you were a Mexican, you earned your money in the States, you couldn't take it home. Now you can. People are setting up boutique hotels, restaurants, doing all kinds of things with their retirement benefits. But they have to be portable. Migrant access to public services such as health and education. People say, oh, but there costs us money in public health. Do you want unhealthy migrants in your neighborhood? I think you want healthy migrants. So open them up. Circuit of migration programs. Certainly public information and public education campaigns that support a liberal migration policy. And then I guess an assisted voluntary return and reintegration program for failed asylum seekers and others who follow in hard times and who would need to go home. So there they are. And I'll just conclude by saying that I've tried to explain why I think migration is so vital to our national interest, to our development, to our well-being. And I would simply like to emphasize that good migration governance for safe, orderly, dignified and humane migration is also the responsibility of the private sector. And I feel in the business world, we have a lot of partners because business people understand the need to have available people who can do the jobs. And I would say that in the end, large-scale migration is inevitable because of what I told you about demography and all the other drivers of migration today. It is necessary if we're going to have, if we're going to fill the jobs, have the skills available and have economies that are flourishing. And it is highly desirable if we have the right policy. So let me conclude with that and apologies for being overly long. Thank you.