>GENEVA (Reuters) - Austria and Hungary's decision to turn their backs on a U.N. agreement on how to manage migration is bizarre and mistaken, U.N. Special Representative for International Migration Louise Arbour told Reuters on Wednesday.
>The Global Compact For Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was approved in July by all 193 U.N. member nations except the United States, which pulled out last year.
>Hungary quit in July, and on Wednesday Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said his country would not join either. Poland is considering leaving too.
>Arbour, a former U.N. human rights chief, said it was regrettable to see departures because the whole U.N. had managed to find common ground, and Austria - an active participant in the negotiations - should be comfortable with the text and could easily express any reservations that remained.
>"What I also find frankly a bit disappointing is that a lot of reasons that are advanced for disengaging are either mistaken or do not reflect what this global compact is all about," Arbour said.
>The compact was non-binding and in no way infringed state sovereignty, and suggestions in Austria that it might lead to a "human right to migrate" were unfounded, she said.
>"This is coming out of nowhere, it’s nowhere in the document, it’s nowhere on the table."
>The compact was a framework for cooperation like the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of targets for improving global well-being by 2030, and it would be "bizarre" for countries to declare they were ditching that agreement, she said.
>The impetus for the compact came after Europe's biggest influx of refugees and migrants since World War Two triggered fear of foreigners and nationalist tensions.
