Muscat calls for global refugee quota system during UN speech

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has urged world leaders at the United Nations to start discussing the a global quota system for all refugees. 

“We now need a Bretton Woods of migration,” Muscat said, referring to the post-WWII financial agreement amongst the Allies that led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. “There must be rules and institutions that see all the members of the international community, and not just the few, share and shoulder the phenomenon of mass migration with both legal channels and instruments to deal with the crisis.

“I urge for this discussion to begin. Let us not let people smugglers decide for us. Let us read the writing on the wall and lay the foundations for this new system.”

The Prime Minister expressed his “pride” at the EU for recently managing to reach an agreement on a mandatory distribution system for refugees.

“I stand in front of you today as a proud European. Can anyone mention to me any other group of nations that has gone so far as to agreeing, albeit with considerable birth pangs and bruises, to such a system? There is none. Only Europe did it so far. So I ask, ‘Where is everyone else?’”

He called on the UN to step up its game against the human smugglers profiting from organising trips to Europe for asylum seekers, suggesting intelligent sharing and joint criminal investigations between countries of origin, transit and destination.  

“The international community should be under no illusion,” he said. “When it comes to these criminals, we are dealing with individuals who feed on the desperation of innocent people. In the process, they are making a fortune – money which is also being used to finance other criminal activities, probably even including terrorism. These people must be held accountable for their crimes and bought to justice.

In a bold pitch, the Prime Minister said that countries of origin who do not help in the return of people who do not qualify for asylum should face sanctions., while those that collaborate should be rewarded with further aid and access to markets.

However, Muscat warned that mass migration will remain a phenomenon, even if a solution is found to the civil wars in the refugees’ countries of origin.

“We need to recognize that it is not only desperation that moves people, but also aspiration. People aspire to a better life for themselves and their families, and at a time when the world is getting smaller, mothers and fathers will set on the move believing, rightly or wrongly, that they will secure a better future for their children.

“Thus we need tools and institutions to set out rules and tackle the phenomenon on a permanent basis – not simply as a humanitarian effort, but as an economic, social and environmental framework to anticipate and manage these flows.”