According to President Danilo Medina’s spokesman, Roberto Rodríguez Marchena, on Friday, 30 November 2018, the President created an inter-institutional commission to analyze the documents and offer details about the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration the country would be signing in Morocco. The commission was ordered to make final recommendations to the President as the head of foreign policy.
According to Rodríguez Marchena, the commission is made up of the Ministry of the Presidency, Ministry of Interior and Police, the legal advisor to the President and the director of the Office of Information, Analysis and Strategic Programming (DIAPE). Rodríguez Marchena said that once the President has the report and has taken a decision he will let the public know.
Information on the signing of the pact was only known in the Dominican Republic after international media, including El Pais of Spain, revealed that several countries had rejected to sign the pact for matters of sovereignty and national security. The United States, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy and Croatia have said they will not sign during the Marrakesh, Morocco conference, the Intergovernmental Conference to Adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. The conference is scheduled to take place in Marrakesh, Morocco on the 10th and 11th of December. The Global Compact is being promoted by the United Nations as the link between migration and development policies.
After the news of the pending pact signing broke in international and national press, the signing has met with widespread local opposition from opposition politicians and business people, primarily on grounds of national security. The Dominican Republic shares a 300-km border with Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere that is marked by political, social and economic instability and is described as a failed state. In reality, there is little security and controls on the border with regular widespread crossing of undocumented Haitians a normal occurrence for commerce, education and health and work purposes.
Read more in Spanish:
Presidencia
El Dia
4 December 2018
