UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- From Malta's vantage point between Europe and Africa it is easy for the Mediterranean country to bear witness to poverty, insecurity and the resultant migration, but such suffering is everyone's problem, Joseph Muscat, the prime minister of Malta, said here Thursday.

　　"When rickety boats laden with irregular migrants reach our shores, we see the suffering and the loss of dignity etched on these people's faces," Muscat said at the annual high-level debate of the UN General Assembly.

　　Noting his island country's assistance to such people, the prime minister said their problems were impossible to ignore by any nation, as all countries had a hand in shaping the conditions that could cause or relieve them.

　　"It would be easy to flip channels once again to park it in someone else's back yard," he said. "But it is not someone else's problem. Irregular immigration, human trafficking and modern-day slavery are everyone's problem."

　　Calling for a sustained evolution in global thinking at the threshold of 2015, he urged all nations to "not only think beyond the current Millennium Development Goals and how to ensure their sustainability, but also about what other goals should be included. "

　　"There can be no sustainable development goals without peace, without fighting corruption, without respect for human rights and without economic equity which is the social justice issue of our time," he stressed, affirming Malta's commitment and past record of working with the international community on all United Nations concerns.

　　He added more must be done to support "the fragile democracies that are struggling to take root where dictators formerly ruled," by support to intra-regional trade, other economic sectors and cultural exchange, and to end conflicts.