El Salvador calls for more efforts to address issue of mass migration

President of El Salvador, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, on Thursday called upon the international community to step up the efforts to tackle the issue of mass migration in order to ensure the protection of the human rights of all people on the move.

The president, addressing the General Debate of the UN General Assembly, also urged the international efforts to strengthen the activities of regional and global organizations dealing with the issue of mass migration.

Sanchez said that he is aware of the factors that lead many of its people to migrate and his country has therefore a joint action plan with Guatemala and Honduras with the support of the Organization of American States (OAS) to bolster productive investment, security and human capacity-building in the region.

The joint plan is intended to improve living conditions in the communities of origin to reduce the current flow of populations in the medium- and long term.

"El Salvador needs support and guarantees that the rights of our co-nationals will be respected in countries of transit and destination," said the president. "The wall is not a solution: it will only lead to greater hate."

Peace and security will be threatened without sustainable development, and expressed El Salvador's full support for the 2030 Agenda, approved in September 2015 to serve as the blueprint for the global development efforts for the next 15 years, he said.

El Salvador has made extraordinary efforts to reduce violence in its municipalities, as evidenced by a marked reduction in homicides in recent months -- by some 50 percent -- as compared to the first part of the year, he said. Endit