Brazil’s Bolsonaro Vows to Withdraw Country from Migration Pact

By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – President-elect Jair Bolsonaro stated on Tuesday that he will revoke the Global Pact for Migration, signed last week by Brazil’s current Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aloysio Nunes.

“Unfortunately, Brazil, with the current foreign minister, has signed the pact … It has to be rigorous criteria to enter Brazil, we will denounce and revoke this pact for migration,” Bolsonaro told journalists.

Bolsonaro had recently criticized the pact, but had not said that he would withdraw Brazil from the international agreement.

The future president Bolsonaro cited the violent demonstrations in France as an example of a country that would be suffering from the influx of immigrants. “We do not want this for Brazil,” he said, stressing however that he was not ‘against migrants’.

Incoming Foreign Affairs Minister, Ambassador Ernesto Araújo, has also been outspoken about the issue.

“The Bolsonaro government will dissociate itself from the Global Migration Pact that is being launched in Marrakesh; (pact is) an inadequate instrument to deal with the problem,” said the future chancellor in his social media account.

According to Minister Araujo immigration should not be treated as a global issue, but according ‘to the reality and sovereignty of each country’.

In the case of Brazil, Araujo says the country ‘will seek a regulatory framework compatible with the national reality and with the well-being of Brazilians and foreigners’.

He stressed that Venezuelan refugees, who have been flooding the Northern cities of the country trying to escape their country’s economic crisis, will continue to be welcomed.

The Global Migration Pact was signed by 150 countries, among them Brazil, on December 10th during an U.N. Conference in Marrakesh, Morrocco.