Monday, December 10, 2018

GOLDSTEIN: Concern over UN refugee pact widespread and growing


GOLDSTEIN: Concern over UN refugee pact widespread and growing




Suspected Rohingya people sit on the ground as they arrive in Idi Rayeuk, East Aceh, Indonesia, on Dec. 4, 2018.Ilyas Ismail / AFP / Getty Images
Predictably, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen and Canada’s liberal intelligentsia are falsely portraying opposition to the United Nations’ Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) as racist.
The pact is to be approved in Marrakech, Morocco on Monday and Tuesday by most of the 193 countries that unanimously agreed to it in principle in negotiations spanning two years.
But since then a number of countries have had second thoughts about supporting the GCM due to the issue it’s ostensibly designed to address.


That is, the lack of international co-operation to look after more than one million refugees streaming out of war-torn countries such as Syria and Iraq, headed for Europe and beyond.Contrary to popular myth in Canada, concerns about the GCM are not confined to Conservative leader Andrew Scheer and Toronto Sun columnists.

The United States, Australia, Israel, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Bulgaria and the Dominican Republic no longer support the GCM.Switzerland, a co-facilitator of the agreement, has delayed approval of the GCM until it votes on it in Parliament.Italy and Estonia have decided not to attend the Marrakech meeting.

Supporters of the 34-page document say its contents are “aspirational”, non-binding and place no new obligations on countries that ratify it.But a growing number of countries are skeptical it will have no impact on One concern is about how activist courts in countries that ratify the GCM will interpret it with regard to immigration and refugee legislation.Another is that UN agreements that are not binding doesn’t mean they can’t be influential, such as the Paris climate accord.Its only binding condition is that nations must report their progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, although


there is no penalty for not doing so.

And yet this non-binding UN agreement is now driving energy policy in Canada and many other countries.
The U.S. pulled out of the GCM with the Trump administration describing it as “inconsistent with U.S. immigration and refugee policies.”




Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t supporting it, because, “we have a duty to protect our borders against illegal infiltrators. That’s what we’ve done and that’s what we will continue to do.”
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison rejected the pact because it would, “undermine Australia’s strong border protection laws and practices” and “fails to adequately distinguish between people who enter Australia illegally and those who come to Australia the right way, particularly with respect to the provision of welfare and other benefits.”
Belgium Immigration Minister Theo Francken said: “It’s way too pro-migration. It doesn’t have the nuance that it needs to have to also comfort European citizens. It’s not legally binding but it’s not without legal risks.”
(Belgium is divided on the issue with its largest political party, of which Francken is a member, opposed to the pact while the nation’s parliament has approved it.)
In Canada, while Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen is now stressing the voluntary nature of the GCM, that’s not what he was emphasizing in a September Maclean’s column on it, co-authored with International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau and Jean-Nicolas Beuze, Canada’s representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
“The Compact isn’t just a bunch of words on paper,” they wrote. “It represents the common understanding and political commitment to protect and find solutions for refugees differently. This is why it lists new strategies and specific goals. Through regular follow-up meetings on the Compact, member states and partners will thus hold each other more accountable on their promises to deliver results for refugees and their hosts.”
Their column sneeringly dismisses the concerns of Canadians about the thousands of asylum seekers who have entered the country at unmanned border crossings under the Trudeau government, as “populist rhetoric” based on anti-refugee “myths”.
In other words, it’s clear the Trudeau government is treating the GCM not as a symbolic, non-binding, aspirational document, but as a significant global agreement that will have a major impact on Canadian refugee and migration policy.
For the Liberals and their academic and media cheerleaders to suggest it’s anything less is highly misleading.
Canadians have every right to be concerned.

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