The State of Qatar participated in the Second Regional Review of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration in the Arab Region, which kicked off Wednesday at the Arab League's headquarters in Cairo and runs for two days.
HE Director of Department of International Organizations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sheikha Hanouf bint Abdulrahman Al-Thani represented the State of Qatar at the meeting via video conferencing.
In his speech at the opening session of the conference, Secretary-General of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul-Gheit said that migration to and from the Arab region contributes to shaping the social and economic reality of the region, its neighborhood, and the world as a whole. It also gains special importance today more than ever in this region which hosts an estimated 41.4 million migrants and refugees and the origin of around 32.8 million migrants and refugees.
Aboul-Gheit added that the Arab region faces various challenges, the severity of which has increased in the last two decades and has had a significant impact on its development process. It has also cast a shadow on various aspects of political, social, and economic life, and increased the burdens on regional countries, increasing the migration driving factors, the pace of brains and talents migration, and the irregular migration and the great risks associated with it, including exposing migrants to human trafficking by smugglers. He pointed out that climate change has also become a strong driver of human mobility, as the Arab region is one of the regions directly affected by major threats of climate change and natural disasters.
The Secretary-General of the Arab League noted the increasing Arab and global awareness of issues related to environmental migration over the past decade, as this was reflected in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which called for a deeper understanding of climate change as one of the important drivers of migration, and the development of adaptation and resilience strategies, taking into account the potential effects on migration and displacement. He pointed out that there were appreciated Arab efforts and initiatives in this regard during the previous two sessions of the Conference of States Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held in the Arab region, in both Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
Aboul-Gheit added that the Arab League is monitoring with increasing concern the difficulties faced by immigrants from the Arab region abroad in the recent period and following with concern information about some of them being exposed to unacceptable racist practices, discrimination, Islamophobia, and marginalization, which leads to difficulty in their integration into societies. He noted that war has been a primary driver of migration throughout human history.
The Secretary-General of the Arab League voiced his regret that the Arab region is exposed to regional wars and conflicts that have led to a worrying rise in migration and displacement numbers. In this regard, he referred to what has been happening to the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the rest of the occupied territories for nine months, from exposure to all forms of violations such as killing, displacement, intimidation, siege, and starvation. He reiterated the need for the international community to bear its responsibility for what is happening in the Gaza Strip and to take decisive and rapid measures to protect the Palestinian people, by obligating the Israeli occupation authorities to immediately stop its aggression against civilians and stop all attempts at forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people.
Aboul-Gheit stressed the importance of addressing the root causes driving the exit of migration and asylum flows, and linking migration and development by following development approaches that work to enhance cooperation between actors in the humanitarian and development fields, considering that this is the only way to reduce those negative structural factors that force people to leave their country of origin. (QNA)
