Dear Friends,

Hope all goes well.

We are writing to inform you that “Zero Draft Plus” of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration has been released. Please see attached the copy of the Zero Draft Plus for your reference. Taking into consideration the comments and recommendations made from the 1st Intergovernmental Negotiations Meeting, the document consists of technical updates and clarifications of the zero draft. However, as mentioned by the co-facilitators, there were no substantive changes that were made in this version as a further discussion is needed.

Please also see attached Zero Draft Plus in word file, shared by our friends from the Global Coalition on Migration, where the revisions made in the Zero Draft were tracked in order to see which languages were changed.

Furthermore, the 2nd Intergovernmental Negotiations Meeting will be held on 12-15 March 2018 in the United Nations Headquarters, New York. The format of the meeting will be different from the 1st round of the negotiations where each day focused on certain objectives. The first three days of the 2nd round of the intergovernmental negotiations will focus on pressing issues that needs to be further discussed. The co-facilitators encourage an in depth discussion amongst delegations around the following general areas:

1) Differentiation between irregular and regular
2) Differentiation between migrants and refugees
3) Implementation and capacity-building
4) Follow-up and review

We are also writing to thank those who attended the GCM Webinar which was held on 2 February 2018. A lot of the discourse and debates were also discussed in the webinar and updates on the 1st round of the negotiations were also shared.

On another note, please see attached the contact details of some of the negotiators from Asia that were present during the negotiations meeting. Some of these negotiators will also be the ones who will represent their respective governments in the 2nd meeting. We will update the list further by the end of the meeting next week.

Thank you very much and we welcome any comments that you might have on the Zero Draft Plus.

Regards,

MFA Secretariat