Muscat calls for ‘new rules’ at global level to tackle migration

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat called for new rules at a global level to tackle migration.

Addressing a keynote speech at the Nizami Ganjavi International Centre in Baku during the third Global Shared-Societies Forum, Muscat said that the world had changed fast to save bank, and “it should change faster for human beings”.

“The United States and Australia have their own ways of managing this phenomenon when faced mostly with economic migrants. Europe is in a rut, torn between rescuing people and security concerns,” the PM said.

Recounting the burial of the 24 migrants who perished in the Mediterranean together with 750 other persons, Muscat reiterated the need to go after the criminal network “making millions out of the modern slave trade”.

Muscat said that while the international community needed to help stabilise those countries providing fertile grounds for traffickers, the reality is that the migratory trends and proportions in the age of the social media are unprecedented and have been so for quite some time.

“The global community is treating this challenge as though it is the same as that which we experienced during the past century. We are tackling an evolved phenomenon with outdated rules that might still be legal but have become anachronistic or plain irrelevant.”

Muscat said there was an obvious need for the global community to come to terms with this new reality that will continue morphing. 

“Yes, the long term solutions are peace, stability and economic development. But then again, in the long term we are all dead. The current migrant tragedy in the Mediterranean and elsewhere is a man-made event, and needs immediate action. The current rules at addressing it are, as we said, inadequate.”

Muscat said that while Europe will take action against traffickers, the problem will persist until there is war and instability. 

“Isn't it obvious that people will flee from wars? The dead in the latest tragedy reminded me of the now iconic picture of a man jumping from the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001. He made a choice that he would probably have a better possibility at surviving by jumping from that unmentionable height, than he had by staying in the unbearable heat that developed from the explosions.”