President Peña stresses importance of fighting hateful rhetoric against migrants

President Enrique Peña Nieto has reaffirmed Mexico's stance on working towards recognizing migrants as agents of change and development in order to guarantee their human rights and fight discrimination.

At the United Nations summit on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants, Peña Nieto defended the importance of immigrants around the world. “The international community can change migrants' situation. We have an ongoing commitment with them that we all have to do our part to meet, because migrants do not simply represent our past and present, they also represent our future,” he said.

Peña Nieto addressed the 71st Session of the UN General Assembly where he described Mexico as being a country of origin, transit, destination, and return for migrants. “We are a proudly mestizo, multicultural and diverse country with a spirited and lively culture that has experience many waves of migration throughout our history. We Mexicans firmly believe that mixing is the future and destiny of mankind.”

However, Peña Nieto acknowledged that people's minds are slowly changing on this issue. “The human rights, dignity, and well-being of migrants must take precedence in the global discussion on migration.” He reiterated that Mexico will continue to take an active role in multilateral forums in order to reach a global Pact for refugees by 2018.

Peña Nieto said that these guidelines should consider a total of 7 principles that include focusing on countries' commitment to ensuring the human rights of migrants, ensuring that countries of origin, transit, destination and return taking on a more active role, recognizing migrants' contributions to the economic and social development of countries, establish a social-inclusion approach to help fight intolerance and racism, pass government guidelines on migration to oversee the flow of migrants, improve international cooperation and lastly, considering the impact that climate change and other natural phenomena have on migrants.

“To make this goal a reality, my country is ready to host an international meeting in 2017,” he said.