37. We commit to facilitate and cooperate for safe and dignified return and to guarantee due process, individual assessment and effective remedy, by upholding the prohibition of collective expulsion and of returning migrants when there is a real and foreseeable risk of death, torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, or other irreparable harm, in accordance with our obligations under international human rights law. We further commit to ensure that our nationals are duly received and readmitted, in full respect for the human right to return to one’s own country and the obligation of States to readmit their own nationals. We also commit to create conducive conditions for personal safety, economic empowerment, inclusion and social cohesion in communities, in order to ensure that reintegration of migrants upon return to their countries of origin is sustainable.

To realize this commitment, we will draw from the following actions: 

(a) Develop and implement bilateral, regional and multilateral cooperation frameworks and agreements, including readmission agreements, ensuring that return and readmission of migrants to their own country is safe, dignified and in full compliance with international human rights law, including the rights of the child, by determining clear and mutually agreed procedures that uphold procedural safeguards, guarantee individual assessments and legal certainty, and by ensuring that they also include provisions that facilitate sustainable reintegration;

(b) Promote gender-responsive and child-sensitive return and reintegration programmes that may include legal, social and financial support, guaranteeing that all returns in the context of such voluntary programmes effectively take place on the basis of the migrant’s free, prior and informed consent, and that returning migrants are assisted in their reintegration process through effective partnerships, including to avoid their becoming displaced in the country of origin upon return;

(c) Cooperate on identification of nationals and issuance of travel documents for safe and dignified return and readmission in cases of persons who do not have the legal right to stay on another State’s territory, by establishing reliable and efficient means of identification of our own nationals such as through the addition of biometric identifiers in population registries, and by digitalizing civil registry systems, with full respect for the right to privacy and protection of personal data;

(d) Foster institutional contacts between consular authorities and relevant officials from countries of origin and destination, and provide adequate consular assistance to returning migrants prior to return by facilitating access to documentation, travel documents and other services, in order to ensure predictability, safety and dignity in return and readmission;

(e) Ensure that the return of migrants who do not have the legal right to stay on another State’s territory is safe and dignified, follows an individual assessment, is carried out by competent authorities through prompt and effective cooperation between countries of origin and destination, and allows all applicable legal remedies to be exhausted, in compliance with due process guarantees and other obligations under international human rights law;

(f) Establish or strengthen national monitoring mechanisms on return, in partnership with relevant stakeholders, that provide independent recommendations on ways and means to strengthen accountability, in order to guarantee the safety, dignity and human rights of all returning migrants;

(g) Ensure that return and readmission processes involving children are carried out only after a determination of the best interests of the child and take into account the right to family life and family unity, and that a parent, legal guardian or specialized official accompanies the child throughout the return process, ensuring that appropriate reception, care and reintegration arrangements for children are in place in the country of origin upon return;

(h) Facilitate the sustainable reintegration of returning migrants into community life by providing them with equal access to social protection and services, justice, psychosocial assistance, vocational training, employment opportunities and decent work, recognition of skills acquired abroad, and financial services, in order to fully build upon their entrepreneurship, skills and human capital as active members of society and contributors to sustainable development in the country of origin upon return;

(i) Identify and address the needs of the communities to which migrants return by including respective provisions in national and local development strategies, infrastructure planning, budget allocations and other relevant policy decisions and cooperating with local authorities and relevant stakeholders.