Today, the Special Representative on Migration and Refugees, Ambassador Drahoslav Štefánek, addressed the UNHCR High-Level Officials Meeting (14-15 December 2021) on behalf of the Council of Europe. The aim of the meeting is to monitor progress on the implementation of the Global Compact on Refugees and to identify progress, challenges, and areas where engagement and responsibility sharing are needed to increase support, self-reliance, and access to solutions for refugees, taking into account the challenges linked to COVID-19.
In his address, the Special Representative praised UNHCR for its efforts to coordinate the follow-up of the implementation of the Global Compact on Refugees and reiterated his organisation’s commitment to reaching its main goals. He informed about Council of Europe’s progress in implementing the pledges made in 2019 and emphasised the added value of regional approaches in achieving concrete and effective results. In this context, he informed on the continued work to address statelessness, specifically the technical meeting and a high-level conference jointly organised with the UNHCR on 23-24 September 2021, and the two priority follow-up actions identified, namely the elaboration of guidance on child-sensitive procedures for stateless children and on the establishment of nationality, in particular for children.
The focus on children is also in line with the Action Plan on protecting vulnerable people in the context of migration and asylum in Europe (2021-2025), which follows the standards of the Council of Europe, and in particular the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. The activities of the Action Plan are also relevant for the achievement of the objectives set out in the Global Compact on Refugees.
The Special Representative has closely followed and participated in developments throughout the negotiations of the Global Compacts, adopted in December 2018, including the submission of written comments on both the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, and the Global Compact on Refugees.
