UN Global Compact: What Happens Next? by Judith Bergman  •  June 28, 2019 at 5:00 am         This initiative [to "present a global plan of action against hate speech and hate crimes on a fast-track basis"] should be deeply concerning and is likely to serve only to silence critics of the UN, including its agenda on migration and the GCM. The EU, for its part, according to statements by Hungary and Austria, does not appear to agree that implementing the Global Compact should be up to every EU member state. Instead, the EU is working on making it legally binding, even for those EU countries who have not adopted the Compact. "A 'secret document' has been published on work by the European Commission's legal service to formulate 'lengthy and devious' legal grounds for suggesting that the compact is, after all, mandatory for EU member states." — Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto. Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl recently said that she was "astonished" to learn that the legal opinion of the Legal Service of the European Commission "represents a different opinion than the previously communicated [opinion that the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is] legally non-binding." She handed over to Austrian EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn a position paper, clarifying that "UN General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding and you cannot declare parts of them binding." (Image source: Austrian Foreign Ministry/Flickr) In December, world leaders of 165 countries adopted an ostensibly non-binding agreement that propagates a radical idea: that migration -- for any reason -- is something that needs to be promoted, enabled and protected[1]. The agreement is named the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), and now comes its implementation. The UN has not wasted any time in setting this "non-binding" Compact in motion. Already at the Marrakesh Conference in December, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres launched the Migration Network (Network)[2], a new addition to the UN bureaucracy, and seemingly intended to "ensure effective and coherent system‑wide support to the implementation of the Global Compact". The International Organization for Migration (IOM) will serve as the coordinator and secretariat of all constituent parts of the Network in implementing the Global Compact. Continue Reading Article