 Now, in terms of the list of speakers, I will begin with His Excellency, Mr. William Swing, the Director General of IOM, to provide an overview of Your Excellency. Thank you very much, Madam Co-Chairs. It's a singular honor for me to be with you today, and I thank you so much for this invitation. This is the Sixth Ministerial Conference, and I've had the honor since taking this position in 2008 to attend all four of the ones in my time. It's good to see you maintaining your regular schedule more or less of every two years as a ministerial. Let me congratulate the Co-Chairs for organizing this conference precisely at a time when migration has become a global issue and has become a mega-trend of this 21st century. We have long held a thesis that large-scale migration is inevitable given the driving forces, the demographic deficit, the conflicts in the world, the digital revolution, distant shrinking technology, in other words, human mobility, is there. We've also held a thesis that it is highly necessary if skills are to be available, jobs to be filled, and economies to flourish. And finally, it's highly desirable if we have the right policies. So we view migration less as a problem to be solved than that of a human reality that has to be managed, and that's what governments are all about. Let me just say that we're living in an era of unprecedented human mobility, and much of it is unfortunately unprecedented forced migration. We're a period of unprecedented humanitarian crises and conflicts from the western bulge of Africa to the Himalayas with very few stable and bright spots in between. Apart from the Syrian negotiations, which we must aboutly hope and pray will succeed, there are at present no other viable political processes or active negotiations that offer us any hope of resolving any of these in the short to medium term. There is a dearth of political leadership on migration questions. There has been a serious erosion of international moral authority, and there is a growing and widespread anti-migrant sentiment, anti-migrant policies afoot in the world today. More and more people are dying for reasons that are simply not acceptable. The figures have already been quoted. We've documented more than 50,000 deaths along the migratory path since the year 2000, and they're probably twice or three times that many because governments generally don't keep records on who dies along the migratory path. So my first point is simply to say there are these global migration trends that we're going to have to deal with. It's been dealt with already in the opening statements by the Honorable Chairs. It is not, however, a pessimistic moment. The international community is engaged. We had major conferences last year, the Sendai Declaration on Disaster Risk Reduction. We had the conference in Addis on financing humanitarian development. We had the Sustainable Development Goals, the 2030 Agenda in October in New York. And we had, finally, the UNFCCC Declaration out of Paris on climate change, which included references to population displacement and migration. And we're looking ahead this year to the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in May, to the large-scale summit in New York on irregular movement and refugees. And we're looking forward to the Habitat 3 conference in Quito, Ecuador, and, finally, in Dhaka, Bangladesh in December, the global formal migration and development. My second point is to talk a little bit just a moment about migration in the Asia Pacific. It is a major driver of socioeconomic development in the region. Temporary labor migration is the dominant moving force in the region. And these people are very vulnerable. There's a good deal of forced migration, as we know, from the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal issue last April May. And there is smuggling and trafficking at countries of origin and large flows of irregular migrants. And there are, of course, there's a hope because we have the Bali process and 17 other regional consultative processes around the world. And I want to commend you for the declaration, the first ever in the 14 years of the Bali process. It's an excellent declaration. It needs to be looked at very carefully. And I commend you very much. I think something is going to be very helpful is the Bali Consultative mechanism. Had we had that earlier, we wouldn't be in the difficulties perhaps that we faced. Final point is simply to say, there is a high road scenario that will take us there and we need to look at a broader, more comprehensive approach to smuggling because we may be doing things in some of our migration policies that actually end up subsidizing the smuggling trade. So we want to be talking about all of that this morning. But once again, thank you very, very much for the honor of being with you. You have our full attention and support. And we want to find more ways to help you in the important campaign that you're waging against smuggling and irregular migration. Thank you. Thank you, Director General. I now call upon his ex-