Migration provides ‘exciting opportunities’, says home affairs minister

Home affairs minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici is hopeful that Malta has played "a significant role in raising the issue of migration higher up the political agenda of Europe".

Speaking during an event to mark a decade of Dialogue on Mediterranean Transit Migration (MTM), Mifsud Bonnici said Malta was encouraging EU member states to tackle the deep problems migration poses "in a more positive manner".

Mifsud Bonnici said government supported plans for technical aid to countries of transit to improve their border control capacity.

He went on to describe migration as a phenomenon which throughout history has also provided "exciting opportunities".

"The challenge surely lies in working towards ever-closer international cooperation - such as today - so that we can ensure those opportunities are enhanced and improved," the minister said.

"The migration phenomenon shows no signs of abating," Mifsud Bonnici said. "Climate change and political upheaval all around us could only serve to make things worse. We have only to look at the turmoil and human displacements caused by the uprisings throughout the Arab Middle East, the coup in Mali and the continuing difficulties in Sudan, Somalia and elsewhere to realise that migration remains an ever-present and existential challenge and a human tragedy on a wide scale."

The minister said that human rights violations, the breakdown of public order, uncertainty and instability brought about by fragile economies, inequitable distribution of wealth and resources, religious extremism, political repression, violent conflicts, natural disasters, as well as an innate human desire to achieve a better economic standard and quality of life in Europe, will continue to uproot millions from their homes.

"And many of those who have been displaced will resort to irregular means of gaining access to other countries in their search for security," he stressed.

Mifsud Bonnici said that Malta's geographical position inevitably places it as one of the principal gateways into Europe.

"Within the limited constraints inevitably posed by our size and dense population, we have always sought to ensure that there is fair, just and humane treatment of irregular immigrants," he said.

Launched in 2003, the MTM Dialogue serves to provide an informal inter-governmental grouping for strengthening exchange and cooperation at a technical level among African, Arab and European MTM partners.

A total of 44 countries from part of this group.