Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ

HIGHLIGHTS OF PRESS BRIEFING BY BRENDEN VARMA,?SPOKESPERSON FOR GENERAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT MIROSLAV LAJ??K

3^RD ROÄ¢¹½ÊÓƵD OF MIGRATION TALKS LAÄ¢¹½ÊÓƵCHED TODAY

• The third round of negotiations on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration started today and will last until this Friday.
• Today the co-facilitators for this process, who are the Permanent Representatives of Mexico and Switzerland, are presenting and explaining the latest changes to the text. They will also do a full reading of the text, discussing the draft, objective by objective.
• Also on migration, the President is meeting now with representatives of civil society to discuss the Global Compact. This is a follow-up to a meeting the President held last December in Mexico.
• The President is expected to seek the civil society partners¡¯ views on the latest draft, as well as their suggestions for the final stakeholder hearing, which will be held on 21 May.
• Asked whether there had been any progress in the negotiations thus far, the Spokesperson noted that the draft Global Compact continued to evolve as the talks progressed. Initially, the co-facilitators had presented a ¡°zero draft¡±, and there was now a revised text before Member States.

PRESIDENT MEETS WITH SECURITY COÄ¢¹½ÊÓƵCIL COÄ¢¹½ÊÓƵTERPART & NEW U.K. AMBASSADOR

• The President of the General Assembly will hold his monthly meeting with the President of the Security Council this afternoon.
• They are expected to discuss the High-level Meeting on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace, which President Laj?¨¢k?will convene on 24 and 25 April, and how to coordinate that with the Security Council¡¯s briefing on the same topic on 25 April.
• Asked why the President was meeting with the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations today, the Spokesperson noted that this was an introductory meeting, as the Ambassador had only recently taken up her new position.