 Migration is a phenomenon that touches everyone. Even though the overall percentage of migrants, as compared to previous years, has remained very constant since the 60s at about 3%, there are nonetheless, numerically, more people on the move than ever before. A large majority of international migrants in the world are migrant workers. The majority of them are moving in a regular manner. Furthermore, female migrants constitute 48% of international migrants worldwide, but they constitute the majority of international migrants in Europe, 52% in North America, 51%. We know that South-South migration flows continue to grow compared to South-North migration, although you would generally think from media reporting that everybody was heading North, not happening. Another aspect, remittances, continue to climb globally while remittances' sending costs remain relatively high. The largest proportion of remittances, 442 billion going to developing countries. One in five migrants live in the top 20 largest cities. One-third of total population in Auckland, London, Singapore and Sydney are migrants and one in four residents in Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris, foreign-born. We're also witnessing another characteristic, the highest levels of forced displacement recorded since the Second World War, 65 million forcibly displaced persons. Another characteristic, although Europe continues to receive a record number of first-time asylum claims, the vast majority of refugees are still hosted by poor or developing countries, particularly those that are close to the refugees' countries of origin. The world continues to struggle to respond to the large-scale mobility dimensions of crisis. These mixed flows contain migrant workers, refugees, victims of traffic and smuggling, stateless persons, unaccompanied children, unprecedented in scale and complexity. Large-scale movements of migrants mostly from sub-Saharan Africa involve horrific journeys facilitated by criminal gangs, smugglers and traffickers. Nearly 5,000 migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean this year, which goes well beyond the 3,700 who perished last year. According to our own Missing Migrants Project, migrant fatalities increased by 35% compared to last year. There is also an undeniable global trend towards a rhetoric of fear with regard to migration and migrants. It is fueled by xenophobia and racist sentiments, and it is propagated by the populist agenda of those politicians who seek to assume or remain in office by playing on the fears of their citizens. A renewed appreciation of migrants for their collective and individual contributions to society is thus urgently needed, so we can come back to a public discourse that is much more historically accurate, namely that migration has always been overwhelmingly positive. The I Am a Migrant campaign of IOM is trying to spread this message. For those of us whose countries were built on the backs and with the courage of migrants, we can attest that historically, migration has been a positive force.