– Ministry of Foreign Affairs, DPRK –
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on designating December 18 as the International Migrants Day at the 55th Session on December 4, 2000.
It aimed at striving for fundamental freedom and respect for human rights and raising awareness of the international community on the effective and full protection of every migrant’s human rights.
25 years have passed ever since. However, the world of today sees no sign of improvement in their conditions. Instead, it is getting more miserable.
In October this year, tens of immigrants died and hundreds went missing off the coast of Djibouti on their way back home from Yemen due to an accident caused by smugglers.
Earlier in Senegal, a boat with immigrants on board sank down, causing quite a few human casualties.
The list goes on.
Western countries are taking measures to raise immigration barriers one after another.
Canada, the self-proclaimed exemplary country welcoming immigrants for decades, recently announced a plan to slash the number of immigrants.
The UK prime minster pledged in November to reduce immigrants’ influx into his country by reforming the existing acceptance system for immigrants.
Germany, known as accommodating the biggest number of refugees in Europe, is taking border-closure measures day by day.
As the Korean proverb goes, people without a country are more miserable than the gutter dogs.
Migrants’ freedom and human rights can’t be ensured just by designating the International Migrants Day.
They can only be ensured when each country and each nation defends its territory by itself and takes care of its own people from the perspective of assuming full responsibility for the destiny and happy life of their people, and thus rules out the possibility of the existence of refugees and immigrants.
(Republished from the original at mfa.gov.kp)