The United Nations General Assembly voted nearly unanimously Monday, 17 December 2018, to adopt the Global Compact on Refugees that the UN describes as a framework to strengthen the international response to the global refugee crisis. Of 181 countries, two countries voted against, the United States and Hungary. The Dominican Republic, Eritrea and Libya abstained.
“It is a global commitment to step up and shoulder our responsibilities toward refugees, to find solutions that respect their human rights, to provide them with hope, and to recognize the legal responsibility to protect and support them,” said UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed in welcoming the vote.
The Dominican Republic negotiators had participated in the process of preparing the agreement. Nevertheless, once the existence of the agreement was made known in the country upon the imminent signing, there was widespread opposition to the pact.
El Dia explains the distrust in an editorial on 18 December 2018. “The vast majority of Dominicans distrust the intentions of international organizations regarding the issue of migration and therefore the almost generalized rejection to the country subscribing to the global pacts for migration and refugees promoted by the United Nations.”
The editorialist recalls the “intemperate attacks that were perpetrated against the Dominican Republic by UN agencies.” Furthermore, he explains: “There is doubt about the good faith of a UN for the Dominican Republic in the face of the problem represented by a Haiti that the agency intervened for more than ten years and could not put it on the path to economic or institutional development.”
The editorialist stresses that the Dominican government has acted prudently by not signing of the pacts. The editorialist continues:
“The Dominican Republic has shown more than enough signs of being a nation in solidarity with immigrants, even when it has had to welcome real refugees and in the process applied a model plan for the regularization of foreigners, the first of this type completely free at a global level.
“The Dominican Republic is committed and obliged by its own Constitution to respect the human rights of all, it has its migratory laws, which must be applied according to the national interest.
“Our nation is committed to the general statements of both pacts and has been demonstrating our commitments in our policies and actions, but we must be watchful that they do not want to use future interpretations of what is agreed upon today to charge the country with the crises of others, provoked by others.
“In that matter, definitely, the UN does not generate confidence in Dominicans,” concludes the editorial.
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El Dia
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MetroRD
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19 December 2018
