Africa: The Global Compact for Migration - What Happened? and What's Next?

opinion

On December 10th, under a purpose-built tent in Marrakesh, Morocco, representatives from more than 150 countries affirmed their shared vision of a future in which migration is safe and beneficial for all. The significance of this moment should not be underestimated. Migration remains one of the most intractable of all international issues: we know perfectly well that cooperation is the only realistic way forward. But vast differences in interests and priorities has, until now, made substantive progress almost impossible.

What happened to alter this? Certainly the 'migration crisis' of 2015 was a game changer. Not just because of the scale of global movement - unprecedented since World War One - but also because of the weaknesses and gaps that it revealed in our collective ability to manage migration. Violence, political instability and lack of opportunity for anything resembling a good life has rendered great parts of the world deeply inhospitable to millions of men, women and children. For too many, their journey and its end is marked by indignity, hardship and sometimes death. And the countries to which they have fled: from Lebanon to Bangladesh; from Germany to the United States, are - or feel - close to overwhelmed.

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