Most people who leave their country do so to work or study, and poorly governed mobility feeds deaths at sea and the trafficking of human beings. President Macky Sall has made the governance of migration one of the priorities of his candidacy for UN Secretary-General.
Migration in figures. The world counts about 281 million international migrants, a little over 3 % of humanity, according to the United Nations. Most live and work regularly in their host country, and the image of an uncontrolled influx conceals a reality made mostly of work and families.
The Marrakesh compact. In 2018, states adopted in Marrakesh a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration. Each state keeps control of its borders under the compact, which organises cooperation among countries that disorder leaves alone before the same tragedies.
Legal routes against trafficking. Smugglers prosper wherever safe routes are missing, and lives are lost on the way. Opening legal migration pathways and fighting trafficking protect people better than walls raised after the fact.
Bringing countries together around the compact. Migration policy remains a matter for each state. The Secretary-General can support the global compact and bring together, around cooperation, the countries linked by the same routes, each of which gains from mobility governed in common.
Experience of cooperation between states. On the governance of migration, as on his other commitments, President Macky Sall draws on twelve years as head of state and on the chairmanship of the African Union in 2022. That experience also explains the form of the vision statement filed with the United Nations, which writes its proposals (development conceived together with peace and security, a renewed multilateralism, a better-governed Organization) as obligations.
Africa at its heart, the world in its sights.
The global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration, adopted in Marrakesh in 2018, is public. Read all public positions at www.mackysall.net