this is my talk. My life as a spyware developer or why I'm probably going to hell. So here is what we'll be covering in the next hour. I will be doing my presentation. I wasn't sure if that was going to work or not so I'm glad it did. Okay, so who am I? Currently my career I am Integrated Solutions Lead from H Conan the office in Toronto in Chicago. Although this is slightly out of date because we just got purchased by Honeywell. So who knows what that job title will be shortly. And basically what that means is I write custom software for power plants. Not part of the talk but kind of like tracking D rates outages, fuel consumption, energy produced, and reports based on that. I've also been doing a lot of NERC SIP work in the past year or so. In a case you don't know NERC SIP is a federal like security regulation. I guess that all the power plants are now obligated to comply with and if you don't the fans the fines could potentially be up to a million dollars per day per infraction so they're not messing around. Previously I have developed pharmacy systems, online casinos, and dating websites. Little bit of everything. And also spyware. And I use the term spyware mainly because a lot of my friends are not technical and that's a word that they understood so malware is probably more appropriate but that's the term I've used throughout my presentation so replace that as you feel necessary. And this is my fourth death con. Yeah and it's an honor to be presenting here. Thank you. So why am I here? I've never seen a talk about the subject, at least not from someone who admitted to actually doing this. I'm sure there may be a few of you in the audience. And I guess potentially someone could have done this talk already but I haven't seen it. And if you're here looking to find out any tricks there aren't any so sorry about that. And I thought it was interesting and I only mentioned this because you know I never thought I'd be the type that would present at this conference and you know maybe you're thinking the same thing so if you have an interesting story I definitely recommend that you present or at least attempt to. Yeah it's been a good experience so far. And also say you don't do what I did. That's kind of the main lessons learned throughout this. As you will see. All right so this story kind of is a bit out of date so the whole thing started back in 2004. I lived in Edmonton up in Canada and then I moved to Vancouver and basically I was broke. And this is where I discovered like it's not what you know it's who you know. All my academic friends and social worker friends were not too useful in helping me get a development job. So you know I had some money saved up but it was running out. So I was getting a bit desperate. And also I want to say emphasize the fact I had no security background whatsoever no spyware I had no idea like I was just really was just a developer. So I had no like specific skill set before I got into this whole thing. Yeah I found the job on Craigslist and like many things on Craigslist you can get yourself into a lot of trouble. I was looking at other places I had a headhunter but they didn't really know development stuff so they were not super useful monster.com. But this is what came up so I applied. Went down to the office. Yeah the guys I think it was on a Thursday interviewed me and basically at the end of the interviews like if you can have the job if you want if you accept to show up on Monday. And I did. And I think it seemed like to him who was completely non-technical that I seemed to know the most so they made me lead developer. So that's what is diligent as they got. And there was five other programmers as well. So the history of this company that hired me. So he had these software people and they were doing some other stuff as well that I wasn't involved with. So there was some other shady character out there funding the whole deal but my boss was just kind of running the business that was putting the software together. So they tried previously with a group of source developers from India and they put it together and what apparently worked quite well. But my boss said that time difference is too much and they had some kind of falling out. So that relationship ended and it turned out that the falling out was that he didn't pay them. So he didn't get the source code which you know should have kind of a bit of foreshadowing if you can't guess. But again my landlord was expecting me to pay money at the end of the month. So that's why we got put together. His former developers were no longer there and he wanted some local people. So here's just some of the overall features of the spy where we developed. Nothing too shocking. The client application where the nasty stuff happens. Run any application we wanted. So once it was installed you basically download an AXE whatever one we wanted and it would run it. Not shocking. And this was mainly with the intention that we would update our own software but we could have done whatever we wanted with ads. Adding links to your favorite list, icons to your browser, shortcuts on your desktop, change your homepage, search provider and also keyword search pop-ups and hyperlinking. So we had the massive XML file with all these keywords in it. For example, flowers. So if you did a Google search or a Yahoo search or whatever search engine we were configured for after you searched it, it would give you a pop-up with the banner ad related to your search term. And it wasn't like a standard HTML pop-up because it was modal. So you couldn't click it into the background. And hyperlinking. So if we found like that word flowers for example on the page we would turn into a hyperlink. You click on it. It would go through an affiliate link which I'll get into later where if you bought something off that webpage we would get commission for it. So that was affiliate abuse was kind of the crux of this application. And it was also checked for updates daily. So the application could be updated or this XML file with all the data in there. On the server side we could track installs, updates, like how often they were updating IP address, where it was coming from, manage multiple campaigns as was the term that was used. So I guess different sources of where the spyware was getting installed from. You could see how effective each source was. And we could upload new versions of the software or any file we wanted and it would get run. So when we're writing this, a lot of like antivirus and malware protection software is pretty stupid. It will basically look for specific files and specific relocations and maybe do a hash check and if it matches something in their bad list it will delete the file or attempt to remove it. So to get around this we made each install kind of unique in a variation. So no two installs would be like the file would never have the same file name. It would never be in the same location. System 32 program file slash common, basically any directory on the computer the software could be installed to and each file would have a separate location. And then to get by a hash check some antivirus and malware protection will just check every file regardless. And see if it matches its hash check.  And again like this is just me as like a regular developer I just it's not like it just made sense to me. It's not like I was like a security researcher or anything like that. Like it was just made common sense. So while I worked there with these basic tricks no where malware protection software was able to remove it or detect it. So I don't know if they needed more time. It was running for a few months. So I don't know if your protection against evil software is defeated by changing the single bit like it's not very effective. We started looking into hiding files into alternate data streams which is basically a not very much used feature of NTFS where you can basically hide files in the file system.  And that flag is set within alternative data or alternate data streams. But we ran out of time and just didn't really get anywhere with that. So the big money making scheme that this piece of software was supposed to do was affiliate hijacking. So basically every site like amazon.com for example has an affiliate program. So if you run like a Twilight fan page at the bottom of the page you're going to do you want to buy Twilight the movie or the book you click on that it goes through your referral ID and you'll get commission on the purchases. So basically that's what we were hoping to abuse to make money off other people's purchases. So we had a list of doing names in a separate XML file and a list of affiliate links that we had set up and we had done this for hundreds and hundreds of websites. Well not me but the business people that were working for my boss. So if you typed in amazon.com our software would pick that up and redirect you through your affiliate link. The only problem with this is if you went to a direct product link like you would actually clicked on like the Twilight book that you were going to purchase off the fan site would redirect you through our affiliate link and then bring you back to the Amazon homepage. So that'd probably be a clue that something was going on and we could have made that smarter as well I assume but we didn't get that far. And like I said you'll get commission off anything we purchased and yeah there was hundreds of links and you can get these in bundles so you sign up for one program and you'll get affiliate links to dozens of websites for example. And this was in 2004 I'm not sure how this is run now. And we also created a kernel module. So basically this would hide all the files from the users. So if you open up Windows Explorer and browse to the directories that our files are hiding in they would no longer show up. Like if you cracked open like a DOS command prompt and did a directory command it wouldn't show up there either. And even when they were executing they wouldn't show up in the task manager. And if you managed to delete them or managed to show them somehow it would automatically download and replace and re-randomize the files once more. And this would probably be called a rootkit now. Like a lot of this stuff I have terminology for it but back then this was just me like oh well this makes sense to do. I wasn't really thinking in any of these terms I guess. So the technology we used on the client side basically an Internet Explorer plugin. And Microsoft calls these browser helper objects. There's not a lot of documentation on them online but we found out that this is what we needed to do to create our add-on or malware to get into IE and integrate with it. But we found enough information to do everything we needed to do. We programmed this in Visual C++6 which is a bit archaic. And the other developers definitely resisted this. They wanted to do it all on .NET which is a much easier language for sure but also requires that you download the 200 plus meg .NET library which is not something you really want to do if you're trying to infect someone's computer. Every version of Windows since 95 has Visual Studio 6 libraries built into it. So anything you build in C++6 or Pb6 we'll just run out of the box. On the server side the web interface was done in PHP and MySQL back end. So just tracking statistics, uploading new versions and the GUI to maintain this whole system. And everything was hosted on Russian servers guaranteed to never take down content and no matter how many nasty letters they got or who they came from. And true to their promise they never did. I don't know if they're still around. I probably have that in some archive e-mail somewhere. It'd be interesting to see what their name is because I don't remember off the top of my head. So you might be wondering why would anyone want to install this wonderful software? And basically my boss said he would pay $10,000 to whoever found a way to remotely install our software. And I took that challenge up. When you take a job like this for money and offer like this is enticing. So this is another surprise. It's exploits an Internet Explorer flaw. It's shocking. So R exploit and any exploit with remote execution requires two things. You need to get the file on computer and out of the protected IE zones like if you go into the security panel of Internet Explorer you've got like trusted sites, local Internet, that kind of thing. Those are the zones we're talking about. So we want to bust out of those zones. And you also want to execute the file once you get it on the hard drive. So again, me not really being a hacker and I don't claim to be leaked at all. But I basically signed up for security mailing lists and just sat there until something came along that looked like could be used for this. And we found one pretty quickly. What basically you'd create a custom CHM file, which I think had the EXE embedded into it. And those are basically help files. I think it stands for compiled HTML. And for some reason windows media player would be able to execute it once it was embedded in this CHM. I can't remember the exact name of this exploit. It came out just before service pack two for XP came out and Microsoft actually made security a bit of a priority. And that shut down this exploit, but people don't patch their machines. So it's not actually that big of a deal. Yeah, and my boss was convinced that this was not illegal. And you know, I'm not a lawyer. Who knows? I'm also from Canada, so I don't know if the laws are different there than they are here. Plus everything was hosted on in Russia. So that adds more fun to the mix. And I'll show you why he didn't think it was illegal. We basically created a custom installation dialogue. And my boss never paid the $10,000. And I don't say this to make you feel bad for me because I definitely don't expect that. I just want to like this industry surprise, surprise attracts a lot of scumbags. Yeah, don't trust their word. I think basically what happened is the guy who was funding the operation gave him the money and then he gambled all the way. Because apparently I found out later that he was also a gambling addict. Yeah, so there was lots of promises for the money, but not actually any of the money, which is slightly different. Not worth nearly as much. So if you remember back in the glory days of Internet Explorer 6, whenever something asked to basically become integrated with Internet Explorer 6, you would get this dialogue, which was like, I'm not a usability expert, but this is insane. Like, do you want to install and run a .cab file, which your grandma is not going to know what that is. And it says the publisher cannot be determined due to the problems below. The test route has not been enabled as trusted route. Yeah, so very clear. Anyway, like, I don't even think you really need to use an exploit. Like, I think there's a certain percentage of people that will click yes, no matter what. But anyway, we had our exploit and we were using it. So this is our installation dialogue, and it's a bit more devious. I didn't put this together and I didn't word it, but it's pretty hilarious. So it starts at the top, browser enhancer. I'll read this out, because I don't know if people at the back can see it. So browser enhancer and big bold letters. Like, that sounds awesome. Congratulations. You have been awarded a browser enhancement exclamation mark. Key features of our software include, number one, giving the user another opinion while they surf the web, broadening their experience and knowledge of the web. I don't know what that means and broadening is also spelled wrong. Number two, giving options to search the web with great search engines. And three, providing the user with other partner software free of charge. You have previously agreed to our terms and conditions to get this step of installation and can review these terms by clicking right on this link. So this actually would bring up our terms and conditions and it was long. Like, it was like 20 pages if you probably printed it out and basically boiled down to like, we own your machine. And if you can close all the pop-ups, we'll let you use it once in a while. And the last paragraph is pretty good. Like, if you change your mind and would like to continue the installation, please uncheck the box below and close this window. If you leave the box checked and close the window, we will finish your installation free of charge. And there's a little checkbox just off to the bottom left there. And I think it was even more devious than that. So, like, back in the day there was a lot of pop-ups. Pop-up blockers weren't really integrated into browsers. So when you saw something pop-up you would automatically just close it right away. Like, it was like almost completely subconscious. So if you had done that, you would have installed the software. And I, like, I probably would have fell for this. So if you click the X in the top right or the big close this window button, it would have the same effect. And I think even if you unchecked the box, what you actually had to do was go to the left hand icon at the top left low MFC icon there. There's a custom context menu item added saying exit without installing. So you had to uncheck the box and then close it from there. So it's even more diabolical because everyone uses that left-hand context menu all the time, right? So I covered most as custom installer, bypass the standard install method, legal disclaimer, and my boss claims was not needed but just in case. And you know what? He might actually be right like this. And this dialogue probably only would, like the vast majority of people probably would have still got hung up by it. But it does present the terms and conditions. So you know what? Like, he could have been right. But again, I'm not a lawyer so. And it's tricky not to install obviously. So how do we deploy this installer? Because again, even with this message, you're not going to want to do it. So this is another thing that I've since learned to call drive-by downloads. But back then it just, it just seemed like the way to do it. And I didn't come up with this idea. I think one of my bosses got this idea from some other scam they were pulling. So putting the exploit in banner ads. So basically websites don't know what ads they run. They sign up with an ad network and they agree to host their ads and they get paid for it. And I think there was, you can configure like I only want certain categories. I don't, they definitely don't have anything like they get to view every single ad before it shows up on their website. This was five years ago. There's almost six years ago now. So I don't know if it's different. But that's how it was back then. And also as someone who is serving up these ads we didn't know what websites it would show up on. I think the biggest site we got put on was yellowpages.com or whitepages.com and the installs went through the roof once they got on there. So basically the ads are hosted on our servers. The ad networks I guess don't want to host them themselves. If they did they probably could have detected half this stuff and done something about it. And maybe they do that now but that's how it was done back then. So you would run the ad campaign for a few days and once I guess they were satisfied that was legit we would then open up our zero by zero iFrame. It is essentially another page that had the exploit into it. And we could set it up so that it was only configurable to a fraction of viewers. So like 0.05% if you know you're going to get a lot of traffic. Only because it would be harder to track down for people to track down where it was coming from. If you went to another machine you wouldn't get exposed to it again. But my boss was greedy and that was basically cranked up to 100 all the time. And we would check for like if you were running a Mozilla browser or some opera or something like that we wouldn't expose the iFrame to you because it clearly wouldn't work. It was IE6 specific. And we'd also keep track of the IP addresses on the server and not show it to the same IP address twice. And we'd set a cookie as well but you know we didn't really rely on that because the user actually has control over their cookies or maybe not depending which talks you've seen. So how does this whole business make money? So we ended up with over 12 million installs of the software. Which I don't know you might with our ability to run whatever executable we wanted I guess you could maybe even call this a botnet. I don't know like we weren't thinking in those terms at all but so guess how much money our software made with 12 million installs. Anyone want to shout out some numbers? Not a dime. So it's really depressing that you have this evil shitty software and you get installed it on 12 million of grandma's computers and no money was made on it. So the funny thing is like affiliate programs for these websites like amazon.com and everyone else they they know people are going to abuse their affiliate system so they have all this fraud protection in place so they're watching out for it. So they'll watch out to it to the degree that they will not pay you but they will still continue to allow these pieces of software to serve up their ads and allow people to buy whatever they're selling through them. So they could easily just shut off the banner ads because they're the ones actually hosting them or like at least put up a message saying like you've been infected with something, something illegitimate is giving you these pop-ups but they're willing to take your money but they're not willing to pay the scam artists that are actually making it happen so that's interesting. Again I don't know if it's different now but that's how it was back then. But my boss still made a lot of money so this is interesting. So how is this done? So our software would make money by installing other people's software. Basically you can make around ten cents per install of someone else's software. I think it ranged from as little as five cents to as much as twenty five cents depending on the package and you know some of this might have been like legitimate software but the majority of it was other spyware with people convinced that they can make money where we did not using the same techniques. So my boss would package as much spyware as he could get paid for around 20 different packages into one big payload and then try to get paid for all of it and he probably would have done more but at that point your computer is essentially unusable and they would only the companies would always argue about the number of actual installs they had but so they would generally only pay around sixty percent of installs but when you're simply by opening up an iframe you're getting twenty million installs and this was over a couple months times about ten cents per twenty different packages like that's very easy money and a lot of it. So what happens when you install twenty pieces of spyware at once? So some programmers were a bit lazier than ours and they actually would install they would have like a like a 900k executable and attempt to download the .NET framework which is like 200 megs and you and you can't they didn't even do it silently so you can see like if you let it download it it would actually like you see the progress bar and the .NET framework getting installed like and I'm actually convinced that the .NET framework allows you to do silent installs they were just lazy. Your computer will never be slower we had a series of test machines and with images we would just refresh all the time to test this out and it was it was brutal but you'd open up Internet Explorer and it would just be nothing but search toolbars and even some of the pop-ups that would happen would have them too and they would try to uninstall each other because they know if your machine is vulnerable and you've got their software installed on it like there's a good chance that they had other people's stuff installed on it too but the only one of their pop-up showing not other people so they would try to uninstall each other and this include installing antivirus so if if your software using basic polymorphic techniques like we were like and I was an expert on this stuff like and they knew that antivirus wasn't picking up their software they would install antivirus with the hopes that it would not remove everyone else's and I don't know but maybe they were getting paid to install the antivirus which would be really interesting actually so you want to be a millionaire because you can so all the technical stuff I've covered is easy like any developer should be capable of this all you need is access to Google and you can figure this stuff out yourself like it's not rocket science at all like there's there's nothing difficult on the technical level of any of this stuff all the work is making like having the business people sitting there and make sure they get paid for all the installs and that's mainly what my boss was dealing with but the technical part is like it's all out there on the internet like it's even on like Microsoft sites this is how you create Internet Explorer add-ons like you once you've got that you can do whatever you want with it and my boss was convinced that no laws were broken and I that's mainly because of the custom installer and I think it didn't really even hurt the you probably lost like maybe five percent of installs by throwing it up there which is like insignificant if it covers your ass legally and he was very he did not want to get go to jail and you know what that may have worked I'm not sure and all you need is basically no conscience I've worked for a few internet companies and it just seems to attract especially well web startups I'll say and it just seems to attract like the worst scumbags they seem to think like the internet's this big get rich quick scheme and yeah I basically have a policy of not working for web startups anymore been burned too many times and you also need people you can trust like as I've said all this stuff is super easy to put together and once people are working in or doing this they like everyone gets the same idea around the same time like my boss is making how many millions of dollars for no effort like why do I need him so everyone that was working for my boss basically went off on their own and tried to do the same thing to the point where my boss only worked with family at that point because you knew you could trust them everyone else like tried to go it all out on their own so how did this all end but yeah and I covered this but much like other internet companies have worked for they basically locked their doors and stop paying everyone once it became apparent the venture capital ran out or they just thought they take the money and run or whatever again I don't want you to feel bad for me but that is what happens and of course it was on payday like he was around every day that month except that one day for some reason and it's also happens to be the time that your rent is due as well so I found out after the fact that the company was founded an AA meeting that's not really relevant but I thought it was interesting weird but apparently that's what happened and I guess probably like you know they my boss fell off the wagon that's why he took off so but I didn't know this laughter the fact so I went on to work for the person who was paying my boss and funding the whole operation again like I was determined to I knew what I was doing was not great but I also needed money to eat and live so I once I saved up enough money and gave myself some time to find a new job I was going to do that so this surprise kind of throw up messed up those plans so yeah I went on to work for him he knew I was doing most of the work anyway software was basically done so what do you need everyone else for and I did that for a few months I think two and a half months until I saved up enough money to finally get out of there and like start a real job search and I was working like about 80 hours a week because I was doing the work of about five people and I can do that for a while but I can't do it for a few months it was a bit of a wreck and I like to be able to sleep at night so the fact is like I think all of us know we should keep our patches up to date and we know how to browse safely or at least we think we do so most of this stuff is going on like grandma's computer that only has a computer she so she can look at her grandkids pictures on Facebook so it's it's a pretty scummy thing to do and you know I never liked it but I had definitely had enough at the end in this period on my resume is listed as contract work which is accurate but I definitely don't get into the specifics at all so my boss was also doing other scams and I wasn't involved on these but I thought I'd list them out for you anyway so trying to throw a search engine results I don't know the specifics of it but like certain search terms like like asbestos lawsuits are highly valuable to search engines because the ads that associated with them are I think the highest in the business so this is also known as search engine optimization so I don't know where the legit version starts and ends and they add their own search engines with paid top results so they would get other people to pay for top links to their search engine and they were like I saw a couple of them and they were never websites I'd ever heard of and I'm assuming they only ever got used through other malware that got installed and this other thing with news video pop-ups where apparently the most valuable pop-up to show is a video so they had a specific version of software to force users to watch a video a day and that's where all the the biggest money is for advertising I guess at least four years ago so what can be done about spyware or malware so as long as there's money to be made someone will try even if money can't actually be made which is kind of what we saw as long as they can get a venture capitalist person to give the money to attempted this software will exist yeah so I don't think this is going away anytime soon unfortunately or even if you think you can make money off people who think they can so this is kind of where we ended up because our software didn't make any money but we were making up our money off people who thought they could so it's very meta and like it's basically a big pyramid scheme as long as someone's willing to pay you to do it even if it never makes a dime they will try and I think black listing is just useless I you know maybe it's a bit smarter now but as I mentioned if your evil software can get by the system by changing a single bit like it's your blacklist will always be out of date there's always be around ways around it so you basically you have a list of software that you don't want your computer to run and it will always be behind the attacker will always have the advantage so I think white listing is the future at least should be I've seen white listing so it's basically rather than you can't run these programs it's you can only run these programs and any other executable that gets on the system is basically denied access of anything and I think these can be made consumer friendly I've seen some enterprise versions of the software and it works quite well it's not perfect but at least I know if I got a bad piece of software on my machine I can go to a list and see like oh it's that one and I can remove it and it's no longer a problem and as for why white listing software is not like out there nearly as much as antivirus or malware protection even though I see it as vastly more significant effective I guess you just can't make money selling virus signature updates with it so I imagine at some point this will be baked into windows or something like that it almost has to be because it doesn't make sense for all the software to not be polymorphic and it's like I could do it so anyone can do it so it's only a matter of time before all this stuff is and then blacklisting gets you nowhere so what did I learn creating spyware is not hard I did it I had no specific security background this big idea is what I thought it should do and I made it do it it wasn't rocket science in the least and you can easily make a lot of money on the internet if you've got no scruples it's kind of depressing so yeah the software will be here always AV and malware protection seems almost useless I don't know maybe I'm wrong or maybe it's smarter than I think it is but and then I wasn't it was shockingly easy to get around it the software is not going away and again back to people thinking they can make money on it it's just kind of depressing like as much of this stuff comes up for machines and all this spam we get to think that it's all for nothing like like not even a single person at the other end is benefiting from it monetarily like slightly depressing and this is kind of a note I want to end on it's not worth compromising your ethics for money I did it because I was broke I knew it was wrong I did it anyway I don't know maybe I should ask my parents for money or something but you know it's it's just not worth it so stay away from these scumbags because I'll rip you off in the end anyway and yeah yes your your honor is worth more and that's basically it I'll be in the question room at the end of the hallway so if you have any questions or want more technical details because I was pretty light on that I'm more than willing to be there for an hour


s very seriously we are convinced that migration is a key factor for sustainable development and peace and building a more respectful world for the human rights of all we are very grateful for the visit of the chair of the UN General Assembly and the special representative of the Secretary General on migration and we are grateful to the Director General for the report and the distinguished speakers 2017 has been a very intense year for states and international migration has always been at the very heart of international discussions and we have seen interest and commitment from states and other relevant actors in building new migration governments reflected in the active participation of all in the consultations for the GCM once again IOM through its excellent political and technical expertise shown strength, experience and skill in terms of its role as the global lead agency for migration on its first anniversary as a member of the UN family we can be very grateful for this decision which has led to better coordination coherence and cooperation improving the conditions for migrants and their families in terms of assistance, protection and information supporting countries of origin in ensuring that human mobility is an opportunity to be seized. We share the view that the GCM is a historic opportunity to deal with the challenges and opportunities of international migration in a more integrated and holistic way and in just a few days time the meeting of Puerto Vallarta will start a new phase in the process towards adoption of the compact and I'm sure that this will have an impact on the future of migration governance and for the organization IOM has the full backing of its members and a clear mandate to enable it to make significant contributions during the next stage of discussions of the GCM Chile is convinced that the IOM will be a central player in this new governance and preparing this new situation the organization needs to be consolidating its growth, strengthen its capacities, both operational and political in nature and ensuring that it has the technical, statistical tools to allow it to be the leader in terms of coordinating and follow-up for the GCM once it's adopted without leaving to one side its operational support as an active member of the United Nations. Of course this isn't going to be easy as it's reflected in the Director General's report the work has already begun by the Director General's team and we hope that it can be successful with the support of all Member States as the work goes on next year. We believe that the working groups are a very important place for exchange and they can play a vital role in this task so we encourage all Member States to actively participate in the discussions of the working groups Madam Chair, international migration has become extremely important in the public discourse and government's work in Chile to respond to the challenges of international migration of a cultural and political strategy based on implementing the relevant international instruments and human rights treaties we play a very active role in providing humanitarian assistance and regularization protection of the victims of smuggling and trafficking and the development of stateless and migrant persons consistent with those principles and we are trying to play a permanent role in regional global levels and migration governments based on a people-centered approach sustainable development aware of the needs of those with particularly vulnerable situations and improving the chances of regional integration and more inclusive and open societies thank you. I'd like to thank the Delegate of Chile His Excellency Mr. Karsten Stauer permanent representative of Denmark you have the floor ambassador Thank you very much Madam Chair Person and let me also congratulate you on your election as chair of the council aligning with the statement made on behalf of the EU and its member state let me extend my sincere thanks to the Director General for his report highlighting the changes is experiencing but also the need for continuity and coherence let me also join others in highly concerned about the future of the EU I would like to thank the director for his strong leadership of the organization and let me finally congratulate IOM on the recent one-year anniversary of joining the UN family allowing the organization to enjoy strength and coordination and collaboration with other parts of the UN system while adding value through IOM's expertise on migration we see IOM support in the area of migration management including capacity building as well as facilitating political dialogue on migration at national, regional and global levels thus helping enhance international cooperation in the area of migration IOM has a key role in the area of human mobility both as regards migration but also as regards practical support to resettlement volunteer return and reintegration as well as support for finding practical solutions to migration challenges including mixed migration flows we particularly see a strong a role for IOM in helping curb the regular migration strengthening return and helping with capacity building of national authorities for them to be better able to handle and foster more regular migration in doing so we attach great importance to the essential role of the essential elements of IOM, not least IOM's character as responsive, efficient cost-effective, non-normative and independent agency and as an agency with an effective field presence our support for IOM is reflected by the recent proposals by the Danish Government to allocate an on-year marked funding to IOM subject to parliamentary approval Denmark will thus make an on-year marked contribution of to IOM in 2018 amounting to 15 million Danish Kroner on top of that we also plan to contribute 10 million Danish Kroner in 2018 in softly marked funding all in all the support to IOM in 2018 will thus amount to approximately 4 million US dollars this is a significant development in our cooperation with IOM also reflecting the agency, the organization's new status as a related agency within the UN system and it bears witness to our support for the organization we believe on-year marked contributions are important for maintaining the flexibility and effectiveness we require of IOM and we encourage others to consider extending on-year marked funding to IOM in line with the grand bargain commitments Madam Chairperson, Denmark recognizes that mobility is part of human nature and that safe orderly and regular migration is a prerequisite for dealing with current migration challenges moreover Denmark recognizes that regular migration is often a catalyst for growth welfare and stability nationally regionally as well as globally whereas irregular migration often has negative political economic consequences for both countries of transit, including the United Nations and the United Nations. Denmark sees a clear link between strengthening global migration management and effective prevention of irregular migration also it is fundamental that we maintain a clear distinction between migrants and refugees in order not to put the well-established international scheme for the protection of refugees at risk. As regard to global compact on safe orderly and regular migration which should not be legally binding to global development as the main vehicle in addressing root causes of irregular migration. The protection and promotion of the human rights and fundamental freedoms for all migrants regardless of their stages is key in our dealings with migration issues in this connection we re-emphasize that we already have the necessary human rights norms and obligations at hand what we need is effective implementation of existing rules and standards. Furthermore return of original migrants to the international law including human rights remains a solution for those who do not have legal stay. We would like to reiterate our strong conviction that managing irregular migration and fulfilling human rights obligations are not mutually exclusive rather they go hand in hand and our common efforts towards ensuring safe order in regular migration must be firmly built on human rights principles in our mutual international obligations including the obligation to the international law. Finally we must have a clear focus on creating sustainable solutions in countries of origin as well as ensuring effective migration governance. We note the importance of IM's technical and policy expertise in the area of migration and we find that the organization should play a central role in improving coherence on migration within the UN system including in the follow-up to the global compact on safe order in regular migration. Let me finally thank you. Thank you Ambassador Stauer. Let me turn now to his Excellency Mr. Andrew Kyoudani, Deputy Representative of Kenya. Chairperson, Director General, Excellencies Distinguished Delegates Ladies and Gentlemen, it is an honor and pleasure for me to be here today to deliver this statement by Kenya during this 108th session of the Council. This comes on the backdrop of two significant processes that will lead to the adoption of a global compact for safe orderly and regular migration and the first anniversary of the IOM within the United Nations system. This indeed has placed migration firmly on top of the international agenda going forward. Kenya aligns itself with the statement delivered by Ghana on behalf of the African group. We also congratulate the chair of the Council along with these two Vice-Chairs and the Rapporteur during your term. Allow me to also congratulate the Republics of Cuba and the Cook Islands on their admission as new members of the IOM as well as the Republic of Kuwait and various organizations which have been admitted as observers to the IOM. We look forward to successful cooperation with all of you. Chairperson, we applaud the Director General for his insightful report based on the theme of continuity, coherence and change. I will now briefly guide the organization to reach its intended mission and vision. We are however particularly concerned with the upsurge in politics that has espoused fear and intensified anti-migrant and anti-refugee sentiments. This must be addressed. As we have stated on several occasions before, the public discourse on migration still needs to turn to a more balanced and historically accurate narrative. Chairperson, Kenya is a country of migrants and in our long-standing relationship Kenya has been a beneficiary of support from the IOM. Most recently the IOM lent support to Kenya's national coordination mechanism on migration and accorded the opportunity to have a national discourse on the global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration. The national coordination mechanism combines key government ministries and departments with migration to control and devolve levels and meets regularly to discuss pertinent issues on migration. At the workshop which was held on 17th October, the national coordination mechanism under the guidance of the IOM met with key civil society stakeholders including academia, research institutions and an interfaith umbrella organization in order to reach a common Kenyan position on the global compact on migration. The workshop revolved around the importance and took cognizance of the importance of engaging stakeholders with migration-related functions to facilitate participation in an inclusive migration dialogue aimed at developing national, regional and international positions on the compact. The workshop further strengthened our endeavor to ensure that a holistic and comprehensive approach and a strengthened migration governance is adopted that will go a long way in protecting and supporting the national coordination mechanism. Kenyan also takes cognizance of the bold steps that have been taken by the African Union and the intergovernmental agency on development, IGAD, in coming up with guiding frameworks for dialogue, partnerships and structural support to the national coordination mechanisms on migration in order to address migration-related challenges. This has led to the development which will be considered for ratification in January 2018 by the African heads of state and government. Chairperson, it is now recognized that south-south migration has eclipsed south-north movement while the relationship between migration and development has also taken an important direction. Arising from this nexus, Kenyan looks forward to having the views and the needs of the global south integrated in the compact. We have completed over a year of strengthened coordination and collaboration with the United Nations and its continued value addition to multilateral frameworks and processes through the provision of migration-related expertise. However, Kenyan recalls its support for resolution number 1309 in which it was stated that the IOM should retain its attribute as a responsive, efficient, cost-effective, non-normative and independent agency. We have recognized your invaluable technical and policy expertise and support during the GCM consultations and we therefore wish to reiterate that IOM should continue providing this invaluable support during the stock-taking phase, the 2018 intergovernmental conference and beyond. We shall be in support of any institutional changes required to fulfill this state-guided mandate in the service of migrants and governments. It would, however, be appreciated that the IOM should retain its relationship. Finally, Chairperson, in terms of human resource, Kenya wishes to urge for a more representative recruitment that provides for a means of appointment that takes into account various geographic, economic and social interests of its constituent groups and regions, including gender representation. I thank you. Thank you to the Deputy Permanent Representative of Kenya Yusuf Permanent Representative of Egypt. You have the floor, Ambassador. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. As an outset, I would like to congratulate you on your election as Chair of the Council and wish you success in your mission. And I also would like to thank his Excellency Ambassador Quinn for his efforts at Chairman of the previous session of the Council. We welcome Cuba and Cook Islands as new members and State of Kuwait as observers to their participation. Egypt aligns itself with the statement of the African group presented by Ghana and appreciates the efforts exerted through the past year by the Director General and his dedicated team in leading the organization on international migration issues. We commend the Director General's report which provides adequate update on IOM activities and partnerships, risk assessment and management, efforts in promoting being of migrants and progress related to the ongoing process of the global compact for safer, orderly and regular migration. Madam Chair, my country expresses its dedication to the strong partnership and close cooperation with IOM. The region office of the IOM was established in Cairo in 1991. It provides policy technical support to IOM offices in 14 countries in the region of the Middle East and North Africa. It cooperates on raising awareness, enhancing capacity and dialogue on migration management with the Egyptian authorities and the Egyptian National Committee for Combating and Preventing Illegal Migration. The office also supports region initiatives and regional consultative mechanism on migration. In this regard Egypt hosted in cooperation with IOM on the 8th and 9th of November in the city of Luxor a trilateral meeting for the three regional processes on migration namely the Rabat process, the cartoon process and the African Union Horn of Africa initiative on human trafficking and smuggling of migrants. Participants from 52 countries from Africa and Europe as well as other organizations had open and comprehensive discussions and presented their national experiences related to enhancing cooperation on combating human trafficking and smuggling with specific attention to unaccompanied minors. The meeting concluded by issuing the Luxor joint chairs conclusions with an agreement between the chairs of the three processes to enhance cooperation and concentrate on complementary mechanism between them. Egypt issued the anti-human smuggling law number 82 for 2016 that addresses the rights and needs of smuggled migrants and anti-illegal migration fund will be established under purview of the prime minister to provide assistance to victim of illegal migration with the adoption of such legislation and in addition to the Egyptian legislation number 64 for 2010 for combating human trafficking Egypt has strengthened its body of law and national efforts in combating this crime. Madam Chair, we welcome all efforts exerted through the preparatory process of the global migration of this year and for supporting regional consultative mechanism on migration guided by its experience we expect expansion of the role and function of the IOM in the next years. We believe that the organization has an important role in the follow-up process on the outcome and implementation mechanism resulting from the global compact on migration. We also would like to seize this opportunity to congratulate Morocco for hosting the intergovernmental conference which will adopt the compact in December 2018. International migration is a multi-dimensional global phenomenon it generates economic, social and cultural benefit to societies that involves. We should approach migration issues in a very comprehensive manner to be able to maximize its benefits and minimize its negative impacts. We rely on the IOM to continue its message for promoting the role of migrants in economic fields. We believe that the international community can face the challenges imposed by irregular migrations through tackling root causes of conflicts. Promoting sustainable economic growth creating proper environment for productive employment and decent work, implementing international commitments to support development efforts in countries of origin and transit. At the end I would like to reiterate my country's support and willingness to work constructively on these issues in order to achieve our ultimate goal which is preserving human dignity. Thank you very much. Ambassador, let me turn now to the Director General for his comments. Let me start with a correction and an apology. My dear friends from Slovenia, I hope you'll forgive me. For the moment I was confusing Slovenia with Slovakia simply because we had a PGA here. I indeed know very well your capital. I was there as the candidate beautiful capital of Ljubljana and I was back there more recently in the last couple of years for one of your important conferences so I apologize for confusing this and to make it up to you everything else I said was correct in terms of your program. I just had the wrong capital probably late in the day or something. I do apologize and to make it up to you if you don't mind I will try to find a way to get back to your capital in early 2018. I owe you a visit but thank you for your understanding on that. I want to then go to address the last five, I guess the last five speakers of the day. First of all is actually our good friend Vladislav Ladovich, Ambassador of Serbia. Thanks for your statement and for all that Serbia has been doing throughout the migration movements through the Balkans for all you've done to try to deal with them humanely and responsibly. You outlined a number of the numbers that you gave are quite impressive in terms of how many have come through, how many you have helped plus what you did even prior to this in former Yugoslavia and so forth thank you for your efforts there. I want to acknowledge your central role in this Western migration or Balkan route with more than a million migrants and refugees transiting in 2015. The way you've handled it is very commendable. I want to say that we are well positioned as the main partner of the governor of Serbia to address this challenge and the consequences and we are with you all the way on that. I hope we can continue to be helpful. I want to commend you on the legislative offices to determine and to tackle the migration challenges. You have a new law on foreigners, a new law on employment of foreigners and with IOM support I hope you'll have a new strategy on combating irregular migration and an action plan with that. So you have a very active migration program and we are honored to be able to support it. I'd like to thank the distinguished delegate of Chile for a good statement. Like you, we are very proud to have the ambassador of Chile Carlos as our chair. We're looking forward to our time together. Thank you very much. We share your view on that. We are I think one of the leaders in the global compact. This is a historical opportunity. We have to take advantage of it and we will try to use this period to consolidate our growth and develop our capacities to be ready to play that role after December of 2018. And thank you for continuing to support IOM. Let me highlight and congratulate Governor of Chile for the implementation of its important program leading to greater protection and greater prevention of interfamily violence, offering assistance and protection to victims in guaranteeing access to justice. The program pays special attention to sexual abuse and child abuse and also targets vulnerable migrants. In 2017 you undertook constitutional reform so that Chilean citizens who are abroad will be able to vote in forthcoming presidential elections, presidential primaries and national plebiscites. A very good step forward seems to me and I congratulate you in the first implementation of this experience. Chile remains one of our most active member states. I'd like to also thank Excellency Ambassador Carson Stauer, a member of our board. Congratulations on your election to the board. We're looking forward to our time together. I'd like to express appreciation to the Danish government for their support to IOM and particularly the intent that you've expressed to give us a large amount of unearmarked funding and would use this to join you in encouraging others to try to find ways to come forward with unearmarked funding. Your total contribution of $4 million is going to contribute to IOM's ability to maintain its flexibility and overall effectiveness. Curbing irregular migration, I agree, is the way to break the business model of the smugglers and their traffickers and saving migrants lives has to remain our priority. These are essential elements of a border management program and as are the other pathways to safe orderly regular migration. And I fully agree on the objectives of limiting or eliminating altogether irregular migration and facilitating regular migration. It self would be a means not only of saving life but also in addressing the negative public discourse about migration. And finally the role of migration as a catalyst for development. It should be recognized and concrete actions taken to support migration and development, the nexus. So we continue to support international cooperation and dialogue and the protection of migrants' rights at all times. Thank you very much for your contribution. Is excellent to see the Deputy Ambassador Andrew Keorani of Kenya. Good to have your statement. Thank you for hosting our very large regional office in Nairobi. For Eastern Africa and the Horn of Africa. Thank you for the years and years of hosting 600,000 refugees more or less number of whom are now going back to Somalia. But you've continued to carry that responsibility with great effectiveness and we thank you for it. I want to commend you for creating this national coordination mechanism on migration, which is a kind of a whole of government approach to managing migration. I'd like to commend the AU common African position which will eminently be ratified I believe and your role in that as well as the EGAD migration dialogue. I assure you that we are working on the protection of migrants and the special attention being given to vulnerable migrants in working with you. Thank you also for supporting our role in the global compact and well beyond. I agree with you more needs to be done on our recruitment policies, our assignment policies in terms of gender, geography, and social and other considerations and we'll work on that and we'll continue to keep you closely informed and welcome your suggestions. I want then finally to acknowledge and thank His Excellency Ambassador Alai Yousef. I want to welcome you to Geneva and to this forum. We're delighted to have you here. I know you're a veteran of Geneva because you've served here and you know IOM so it's good to have you in our midst today. Thank you for your very kind words on my report and on the work of IOM in general. Egypt is one of our strongest and most active member states and partners. Thank you for hosting our very important regional office for the Middle East and North Africa program with your government country program. I want to welcome the results of the Luxor conference, the joint chair conclusions that you organized and helped us together Egypt and IOM to bring together the cartoon process, the robot process and the Horn of Africa initiative. All three very important initiatives. Thank you for helping us on that. I guess finally your new anti-human smuggling law of 2016 is an important step forward and we will assist you in implementing that and putting in action your plan for implementation and we will be ready to implement the outcome of the global compact, expanding our role and I join you in the priority of saving life and preserving human dignity. Thank you. Thank you Director General. Let me now turn to Mr Richard Johnson, Minister Councillor of Australia. You have the floor Mr Johnson. Thank you very much chair. With Australia's time as a member of the Council Bureau now concluded we formally congratulate you Ambassador together with the other Bureau members on your respective appointments. We look forward to working closely with the Bureau during what will be a very important period for IOM. We welcome as members the Republic of Cuba and the Cook Islands and Kuwait as an observer. Chair, Australia considers IOM to be the lead global agency on migration now and in the future. Full stop. There are other agencies that deal with migration but there is no other body that deals exclusively with migration. There is no other agency that can provide practical real-time support and assistance across all levels, national, regional and global. This position which Australia held before there was a compact on the horizon, needless to say will inform our approach to the upcoming stock taking meeting in Mexico and to the negotiations on the compact next year. Director General, allow me to express Australia's appreciation for your leadership. Under your guidance IOM's membership has increased to 168, perhaps 169 this week and the organisation has witnessed a remarkable growth in activity globally. And of course IOM has successfully entered the UN system which adds another dimension to its important work in assisting states to build their capacity to manage migration to conduct confidence building dialogue and to share with one another examples of best practice. IOM can bring to the UN an example of an organisation that is responsive, flexible and able to get things done not despite being non-normative and practical but because of it. And we believe this is a model the UN could do well to understand appreciate and draw lessons from. Chair, Australia is a nation built on migration. One in four Australians in fact alive today were born overseas. We have and continue to realise the benefits of migration through a carefully managed approach linking migration to labour market needs especially having in place sound integration strategies and through effective border management. Critically public confidence in the benefits of migration remains strong and this confidence is the bedrock of our ability to be a global leader in providing safe regular and orderly pathways and to remain one of the world's most generous refugee resettlement countries. Chair, Australia places a very high value on its relationship with IOM. IOM's delivery of migration management support capacity building and humanitarian assistance both globally and within the Asia Pacific region form a key part of Australia's approach to manage migration. Together we deliver numerous services around the world to ensure the effective, efficient and humane management of migration for the benefit of all. In 2016-17 for example, Australia was proud to contribute significant funding to IOM to deliver capacity building activities including the provision of services for refugees in Cambodia, training for Iraqi and Jordanian border control authorities, document verification services throughout Africa, capacity building in migration management in Papua New Guinea as well as assisted passage medical and related services for refugee entrants. As we close 2017, I would like to thank the Director-General and his staff around the world for their continued high standards of work in often trying circumstances. We look forward to our continued close engagement at all levels with the organisation. Before finishing, Chair, I would like to take up the Director-General's challenge from yesterday. Australia as many of you know is sometimes referred to as the world's largest island but we are of course the world's smallest continent sitting as we do on a tectonic plate. Therefore Director-General is one of the founding members of IOM, I submit Australia as the first continent to have achieved universal membership. Thank you. Thank you Richard for that very good statement and for the humour. Let me now turn to his Excellency Mr. Yuri Kimenko, representative of Ukraine, you have the floor ambassador. Thank you Madam Chairperson Madam Chairperson Mr. Director-General Excellencies Distinguished Delegates The delegation of Ukraine welcomes the report by the Director-General on the immigration related activities. We share his concerns regarding a series of recent global developments and command the work of the IOM staff dedicated to solving the problems of migrants, victims of human trafficking and IDPs in different regions of the world. Taking this opportunity I would like to commend your Director-General strong leadership over the last decade in guiding the IOM through the time of unprecedented challenges in the migration sphere. The role of the organization and its commitments as well as the number of its member states have visibly increased. We believe that IOM's active engagement globally will only grow in the future. It is worth noting that last year's IOM joining of the United Nations system has opened new opportunities to the organization especially in extending its participation in the movement at the field level in particular to allowing in particular to avoid duplication of the work. In the period of proliferation of mass displacement in the world there is a need for IOM to continue adapting itself to meet the challenges it is confronted with. The massive movement of persons across the border and within states is forthing the international community to take in creating a framework to address the emerging instabilities. Thus the global compact for migration should give us a historic opportunity to strengthen the protection of the rights of migrants and enhance governance of and international comparison on migration. While the global compact is a member state led process at the same time there is no doubt IOM's role in supporting the negotiations by extending the technical and policy expertise required as well as engaging diverse stakeholders in the consultations is essential. Moreover, after the global compact is adopted the process will not end. We believe that the further role of IOM with regard to the implementation of the global compact and its follow up will be of essence as well. Madam Chairperson in our view in further deliberations and actions we must pay increased attention among other things to the situation with IDPs as their number is significantly growing. In most cases affected countries are not ready to respond to new realities caused by massive internal displacement especially in conflict situations. These individuals who are at risk of becoming refugees, irregular migrants or victims of human trafficking if their displacements persists require protection and assistance. We therefore believe that this category of vulnerable persons needs to be adequately taking into account in the future intergovernmental agreements including in both global projects. Madam Chairperson Ukraine appreciates IOM's continuing efforts to strengthen the protection and self-reliance of IDPs. Because of Russia's over three year long hybrid aggression against my country the number of IDPs in Ukraine has reached 1.6 million and the number of all affected persons is even higher. The systematic violations of the Russian-backed illegal armed groups which provoke casualties among civilians and Ukrainian servicemen as well as blocking by the above mentioned illegal armed groups of necessary humanitarian access to the temporary occupied territories in eastern Ukraine continue to aggravate the overall situation. The Government of Ukraine together with international partners continues to provide all necessary assistance to vulnerable people in particular IDPs further undertaking all possible institutional and legislative efforts to increase their social and security guarantees and ensure their human rights. The Director General's visit to Ukraine in October last year marked the 20th anniversary of the IOM mission in Ukraine. IOM's activities in assisting Ukraine comprise dozens of projects in particular in countering trafficking and assisting IDPs supporting community stabilization and social integration strengthening self-reliance of vulnerable persons and providing capacity-building support for migration-related government bodies. We express our sincere gratitude to IOM and other international partners for their commitment and dedication and hope for their continuing active engagement. We are further support of the IOM's activities in particular in our country, in my country. I think. Thank you, Ambassador Klymenko. Let me turn now to the last speaker in my list, Ms. Kaya Bilton, Deputy Director of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway. Thank you, Chair. Let me first express our gratitude to you, Director General and your staff. We recognize and commend you on the important role that the IOM plays in the many crises around the world in developing and refining your organization so that it can meet the challenges ahead of us and not least for your engagement and assistance with respect to the development of the Global Compact on Migration. The last 12 months have indeed been demanding. We join many other delegations in congratulating you on the IOM's first year as a member of the UN family. The reports to this council from the Standing Committee and the many working groups bear witness to great activity and effort. Norway supported the entry of IOM into the UN system. We would also like to see the organization well established as the Global Lead Agency on Migration as well as a crucial hub in the follow-up framework that might be established for the Global Compact. We would like to make a point that we feel needs attention at this moment in order for the IOM to successfully manage such a crucial role. It is important to ensure that all the agencies with a stake in migration issues are given the space and responsibility they need on their respective and specific mandates. The only way to adequately respond to the complexity and magnitude of the challenges ahead of us is a comprehensive approach and broad interagency alliances. A comment also on the compact itself. The GCM will be subject to intergovernmental negotiation. It therefore needs to take into account the fundamental and diverse national interests involved without which the compact will not gain sufficient support nor legitimacy. For Norway it is important that the compact acknowledges the sovereign right of governments to decide which foreign nationals may enter and reside in their territory. However the compact must also underline the need for national policies to ensure the integration and inclusion of those who are granted permits to stay allowing them access to health education and the labour market. We would also like to mention that in order for an efficient protection and asylum system to work there is also a need for well functioning systems of return for those who do not meet criteria for stay. But it must at the same time make clear that any type of return whether voluntary or otherwise must be in compliance with applicable international law including the principle of non-reformant and international human rights law. Chair we would like to sum up in repeating our commitment to the IOM will elaborate and develop our relationship and partnership with you also in the year to come. We are also committed to the process leading up to the global compact which we hope and believe will become our common tool in endeavours towards global solutions to global challenges. Thank you. Thank you Deputy Director let me now turn to the general for his comments. You have the floor sir. Thank you. First of all my thanks to the distinguished delegate from Australia and let me express our deep appreciation for the remarkable leadership and contribution of the outgoing council chair our friend Ambassador John Quinn. I'm grateful for Australia's strong support for IOM's leading role as you say the leading migration agency and the endorsement. We are very much welcome all of the positive initiatives you've taken increasing your refugee resettlement quota and your efforts to adopt a modern slavery act I think that's a move in the right direction. Thank you for your generosity and supporting emergency projects around the world. Also border management and other areas. I would congratulate you co-chairing of a very successful body process business and government forum recently. Thank you for all that we're doing together. We're pleased overall with our cooperation and looking forward to working more closely together on supporting the Pacific countries in areas such as counter trafficking climate change and labor migration and I know when I'm beaten so I conclude that Australia is the first continent to have full membership in IOM. Congratulations. My second intervention is to respond to the very good intervention made by Ambassador Klymenko a representative of Ukraine three points. First of all congratulations on the visa free regime that you've been able to negotiate with the European Union earlier this year. We're glad that we were able to have a modest role in supporting you on that and that you have that agreement now which is excellent and you can be assured of our continued engagement with you and support for you. Secondly I would remind everyone that our program in Ukraine is our largest in Europe, our largest presence and secondly it is our most diverse operation. We are working in virtually every field covering most of the aspects of a migration policy and then finally on my recent visit to Kiev which you kindly mentioned I wanted to say how pleased I was to be there to celebrate 20 years of cooperation with Ukraine and I saw the great work that our IOM people are doing in cooperation with your authorities. distinguished representative of Norway thank you very much for your statement. We've had a long standing relationship with Norway particularly one of our best stand by partners of course is Norway Norwegian Refugee Council I want to thank you for the outstanding and multifaceted relationship that we do have long standing well established particularly in return activities and increasing contributions from Norway to support us in crisis areas around the world and fighting against trafficking and smuggling and in the emergency operations. We are ready to resume the return program in Norway in full scale and I think something that we can discuss and when you're ready to let us know on that I want to thank Norway for the support also for a very strong role for IOM in the global compact and I want to assure you we work on the basis of partnership we're not looking to have a lead role in the global compact period to exclude others it just happens to be that we are the only agency that spends time and all of its resources on all aspects of migration but if there's labor migration we're going to be a cooperative ILO if it's refugees our traditional partner UNHCR we will be partners with them to support them we don't expect to be the lead in every area but the overall lead there's only one agency that has the full scope of migration activity so I wanted to reassure you on that we of course will fully respect state sovereignty on the policies issues and who enters and leaves and so forth and we will we will do any return as long as it is voluntary we don't do forced returns as you know but on returns we're ready to go but thank you all very much you've been very patient and I'm grateful to you thank you very much Director General ladies and gentlemen colleagues we are now drawing to an end this session in the afternoon of the second day of the council before ending let me provide you with a couple of pieces of some pieces of information first there have been circulation of two draft resolutions this afternoon resolution C108L18 revision one and C108L19 these resolutions are with you if you don't have them please come to the secretary to get your copies we intend to ensure that by the end of the item 11 the general debate tomorrow morning we would come to the point of adoption of these resolutions I also would like to inform you that I have requested the secretary to make available to the council the four submissions provided to the office of the special representative of the secretary general in response to her request for inputs to the secretary general's report on the development of the global compact on migration these are four submissions the first outlines a possible structure and elements for the global compact in general terms the second submission provides proposed actionable commitments on a wide range of issues as was requested the third delves more deeply into what a follow-up and review mechanism could entail including action at national, regional and global levels and building on existing mechanisms insofar as possible as well as identifying need for cooperation and coordination within the UN system and other partners finally the fourth submission is that that reflects IOM's contribution joint submission actually with UN DESA and OECD on migration data all four of these documents are available in hard copy just outside the room they can also be found on the section of the IOM website dedicated to the GCM and in the SRSGs website they basically focus on the technical and policy support provided by the IOM to the consultations phase to the stock taking and negotiating phase that is beginning next week and after should member states so wish perhaps we could ask the secretariat to send these documents directly to all member states in the next day or so as you prepare for the Puerto Vallarta stock taking meeting if that's possible thank you very much I want then to announce that tomorrow from 10 to 12 for adoption of resolutions we will have a continuation at the end of the general debate after which immediately from 12 to 1 we will have the second panel of experts in relation to the report on migrations in the 2018 world understanding migration in an interconnected world I wish you a very good evening thank you very much till tomorrow