Morocco Proposes Skill Networks to Enhance Migration Policies in Western Mediterranean

Intervening at this meeting, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who opened the proceedings on Monday in Marrakech, recommended the networking of existing observatories and national and regional centers of expertise on both sides of the western Mediterranean, as well as the development of a compilation of good practices on the elimination of hate speech, xenophobia and racism.

For him, migration policies, regular migration, migration and development, migration and integration, as well as the fight against irregular immigration and migrant trafficking and smuggling networks, are the five areas that deserve special attention, because in the field of migration, "it is time to set the terms of the debate around specific objectives and simple and pragmatic actions," he stressed. He added that Morocco’s ambition is for this conference to serve as a platform for a positive agenda of measures, drawing inspiration from some of the consensual principles of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, adopted in December 2018 in Marrakech.

Created in 1990, the 5+5 Dialogue is a sub-regional forum that is one of the first successful initiatives between Mediterranean countries. It brings together the ten countries of the western Mediterranean, namely Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Tunisia, Spain, France, Italy, Malta and Portugal.