PA-UfM: Morocco calls for more efforts to combat migrant smuggling

Morocco called on Monday in Lanzarote (an island in the Canary archipelago) to step up efforts to effectively combat migrant smuggling and ensure the safety of would-be illegal immigrants, and to invest more in legal migration mechanisms.

“We need to intensify efforts to combat the criminal networks that exploit the vulnerability of migrants, and to ensure the safety of would-be immigrants throughout their journey,” said Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives Abdelmajid Fassi Fihri at a meeting of speakers of parliaments of Southern Europe and North Africa under the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean (PA-UfM).

Fassi Fihri, who represented Rachid Talbi El Alami, Speaker of the House of Representatives and Vice-President of the PA-UfM, at the meeting, said that Morocco had stepped up its efforts to secure its borders, while respecting international obligations to protect migrants, and stressed the need to strengthen cooperation with neighboring countries to combat human trafficking networks.

Stating that migration management “cannot be reduced to a security approach”, he stressed the need to invest more in legal migration mechanisms, facilitating people’s mobility in an orderly and secure manner, while creating opportunities for young people, as the main affected category by these migratory flows.

Fassi Fihri added that “migration management in the Mediterranean and Atlantic cannot be achieved without a shared vision and collective solutions to ensure that migration becomes a driver of sustainable development and a factor in bringing nations closer”.

In 2018, the Kingdom hosted the Intergovernmental Conference in Marrakech for the adoption of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, “a milestone in global cooperation on migration which reflects Morocco’s conviction that migration management must be collective, humane and based on principles of solidarity and respect for human rights”.