EU: The United Nation Secretary- General, Mr Kofi Annan, has urged Europeans to stop blaming immigrants for social problems and to recognise that migrants could ensure that Europe enjoyed a richer future.
"Migrants are part of the solution, not part of the problem. A closed Europe would be a meaner, poorer, weaker, older Europe. An open Europe will be a fairer, richer, stronger, younger Europe - provided you manage migration well," he said.
Mr Annan was speaking at the European Parliament in Brussels after receiving the Sakharov Prize for human rights in honour of UN staff killed in Iraq. He criticised the nature of the debate on immigration in Europe and the frequent stigmatization of immigrants.
"They don't want a free ride. They want a fair opportunity. They are not criminals or terrorists. They are law-abiding. They don't want to live apart. They want to integrate, while retaining their identity," he said.
Mr Annan said that governments could reduce the abuse of asylum laws by offering economic migrants other ways of gaining residence legally. He said that seven out of 10 refugees fled to developing countries, where resources are far more stretched and human rights standards more uneven than those in Europe. The EU should be among those helping to strengthen the capacity of poor countries to provide protection and solutions for refugees, he said.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, welcomed Mr Annan's remarks and acknowledged that migration was an issue that required more urgent attention.
"This is an issue with which my own country has enduring historical experience accumulated through generations who emigrated from Ireland and made lives for themselves abroad. It is now an issue of major global significance which needs to be put higher up the international agenda," he said.
Mr Cowen reaffirmed the EU's commitment to the UN, adding that the multilateral system represented the only way that human rights and humanitarian law can be effectively defended.
"It provides the only real means of addressing the varied threats of today: terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, poverty, hunger and disease together with new, or rather growing challenges, such as m igration to which the Secretary-General has made particular reference today. It is only through being multilateralist that effective action can be taken to meet the Millennium Development Goals, for example, so that the glaring inequalities and unremitting human suffering which in turn create and foster so many threats to peace and security are meaningfully addressed," he said.