A 2018 agreement that aims to strengthen international cooperation on migration management must become reality, the UN Secretary-General said on Friday in New York.
António Guterres presented his latest biennial report on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration to Member States during an informal meeting of the General Assembly.
It shows that in 2024, an estimated 304 million people were migrants, or 3.7 per cent of the world's population. Children accounted for between 12 to14 per cent, or around 37 to 42 million.
Mr. Guterres told ambassadors that the report makes one truth unmistakably clear: "Migration is not a crisis. The crisis is the failure to manage it together."
Politicised and dehumanised
The Global Compact underscores that no country can manage migration alone, especially as the international community confronts challenges such as climate change, demographic shifts or economic transformation.
Although "human mobility" is profoundly shaping the world, "the global reaction has too often been driven by fear, division, and rank opportunism," the Secretary-General noted.
"Across continents, migrants are being instrumentalised to score political points -with devastating human consequences," he said.
"They are being dehumanised in public discourse. And they are being denied the rights and dignity that belong to every member of the human family - despite the enormous contributions migrants make to economies and societies."
Safe pathways decreasing
This is happening at a time when safe and regular pathways for migration - labour schemes and family reunification, for example - are becoming even more restrictive, pushing people to resort to smugglers and undertake dangerous journeys.
More than 48,000 migrants have died or gone missing in transit since the Compact's adoption, according to the report- issued a day after the UN migration agency IOM affirmed that sea crossings like the central Mediterranean remain among the deadliest routes.
"It is a moral outrage that thousands of men, women and children die or go missing every year because no safe alternative exists," Mr. Guterres said.
Victims, not criminals
He insisted that migrants are not criminals, but victims. The real criminals are the "ruthless smuggling and trafficking networks" that "profit from despair, exploit the absence of safe alternatives, and thrive when cooperation fails" - and they must be prosecuted and brought to justice.
Meanwhile, many countries have taken important steps since the compact's adoption, including expanding regular pathways, strengthening labour mobility initiatives, improving search-and-rescue at sea, as well as supporting safer returns and reintegration.
Yet "progress is uneven - and far below what today's realities demand." Migration governance needs to be "rights-based, gender-responsive, child-sensitive," he said. It must also respect national sovereignty and be grounded in human dignity.
From progress to action
To be effective, countries must work collectively around two fronts, starting with expanding and simplifying clear pathways of regular migration.
The second - focused on countries of origin - calls for ensuring development cooperation that invests in education, skills and decent job creation.
"We must now translate vision into accelerated action for safe, orderly and regular migration," the Secretary-General said.
This includes boosting cooperation to both save lives and strengthen communities, cracking down on smuggling and trafficking networks, ending child immigration detention, matching migrants' skills with labour market needs, and "confronting toxic narratives with evidence, truth, and humanity."
A better 'migration story'
The Secretary-General said the International Migration Review Forum in May must help to push countries towards decisive, measurable action.
He stressed that humane, cooperative migration governance is not only possible but essential to a stable, peaceful and prosperous world.
"Migration is a story as old as humanity: a story of courage, resilience, and mutual benefits," he said. "Our task is to ensure that it never becomes a story of death and despair."
He concluded by urging countries to "make the Global Compact real - in every region, on every route, for every migrant."
