U.N. members on Monday adopted a deal aiming to improve the way countries cope with the rising rate of migration, but almost 30 countries, including Israel, refused to endorse it over fears it would interfere with their immigration policies.
The nonbinding pact, known as the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, was drafted to foster global cooperation on migration. In Monday's conference, only 164 of the 193 U.N. member states agreed to formally sign it. It now heads to the U.N. General Assembly for a vote.
Ten countries, mostly in formerly communist Eastern Europe, have pulled out of the deal. Six more are debating whether to quit, a U.N. spokesman said after the pact was adopted. He did not say whether the rest of the countries absent from the conference in Marrakesh might also pull out.
Israel recently announced that it would not be part of the agreement because it could result in courts granting labor migrants the same status as asylum seekers and refugees, ultimately forcing the state to provide all migrants with the same rights and benefits.
"I have instructed the Foreign Ministry to announce that Israel will not join and will not sign the immigration treaty," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in November. "We are committed to protecting our borders from illegal infiltrators. That is what we have done and what we will continue to do."
With a record 21.3 million refugees worldwide, the U.N. began work on the nonbinding pact after more than 1 million people arrived in Europe in 2015, many fleeing civil war in Syria and poverty in Africa.
But U.S. President Donald Trump's administration said the global approach to the issue was not compatible with U.S. sovereignty.
Since July, the accord, which addresses issues such as how to protect migrants, integrate them and send them home, has been criticized by mostly right-wing European politicians who say it could increase immigration from African and Arab countries.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, accused by critics of exacerbating the refugee crisis by opening Germany's borders in 2015, said cooperation was the only answer to tackling the world's problems.
"The pact is worth fighting for," Merkel, one of around a dozen national leaders at the Marrakesh conference, told the forum. "It's about time that we finally tackle migration together."
Without naming Trump or his "America First" policy, she said multilateralism was the way "to make the world a better place."
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said migration needed better management and rich countries would benefit.
"In the many places where fertility is declining and life expectancy is rising, economies will stagnate and people will suffer without migration," he said in his opening address.
"It is clear that most developed countries need migrants across a broad spectrum of vital roles, from caring for elderly people to preventing the collapse of health services," he said.
On Sunday, Chile withdrew from the pact, while Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel saw the biggest party in his coalition quit in a dispute over the accord.
In November, Austria's right-wing government, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, announced that it plans to withdraw from the pact, which it said would blur the line between legal and illegal migration.
Australia said it would not sign up to a deal that compromises its hard-line immigration policy.
