UNITEDUN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday asked member states to commit themselves to a global compact on migration, which is ready for adoption later this year.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration provides an opportunity for the world to come together and manage one of the many facets of globalization, said Guterres.

"I urge governments, businesses, civil society, but also local and regional authorities to come to the table ready to make commitments that will maximize the benefits of well-managed migration, and reduce the negative impact of ill-advised policies and a lack of cooperation," he told a high-level event on the compact on the sidelines of the General Debate of the UN General Assembly.

The General Assembly, which started to develop the global compact in April 2017, finalized the text of the compact in July 2018, making it ready for adoption at the Marrakech conference in December 2018.

Migration is a historic and multi-faceted phenomenon involving humanitarian, human rights, and demographic issues. It has deep economic, environmental and political implications, said Guterres.

It generates many different, legitimate and strongly held opinions, he said. "Unfortunately, it is also an issue that has often been misrepresented and exploited for political gain."

Unregulated, unmanaged migration has created false and negative perceptions of migrants that feed into a narrative of xenophobia, intolerance and racism, he said.

That makes agreement on the text of this first-ever global compact on migration particularly difficult, he said.

The United States withdrew from negotiations on the global compact in December 2017. Hungary quit the process in July 2018.