Australia becomes latest country to reject UN global migration pact

Australia has become the latest country to decline signing a United Nations migration agreement, with ministers saying Wednesday that it was not in the national interest.

The global compact for migration, which is due to be signed next month at a UN summit in Morocco, "would risk encouraging illegal entry to Australia," said a statement signed by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and Foreign Minister Marise Payne.

The statement added that the compact "fails to adequately distinguish between people who enter Australia illegally and those who come to Australia the right way."

The UN pact has become controversial in many countries in the West, especially in those led by conservative governments, with Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia, Israel and the United States saying they will not sign it. 

Critics say the non-binding agreement enshrines economic-driven migration as a human right, while its proponents say it will improve management of the international flow of migrants and protect human rights. 

Australia's conservative government, which has been in power since 2013, is responsible for designing and implementing a widely-criticized policy of incarcerating in offshore facilities those migrants and asylum seekers arriving to the country by boat.

The UN has called the conditions at the camps on the Pacific islands of Manus and Nauru "very shocking," while human rights groups have called the facilities "open-air prisons... designed to inflict suffering on some of the world's most vulnerable people."