"Today, PACE is one of the most effective regional human rights mechanisms in the world," Ban said while addressing PACE in a speech.
He suggested that PACE should take on more tasks in global issues to include migration and the fight against extremism.
"I request you to take part on a global endeavor covering four interrelated issues. Firstly, the restrictions imposed on civil society, secondly, migration, thirdly, the upsurge in violent extremism and, fourthly, the need to an urgent end to create the conditions for a future that will bear a hallmark of our ability," he said.
Ban stressed that the United Nations are trying to resolve violent conflicts and save lives in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and South Sudan.
The UN secretary-general was addressing lawmakers from 47 countries on the second day of the summer session of PACE, underway in Strasbourg.
Human traffickers should be brought to justice and punished, not immigrants or refugees, Ban Ki-moon said.
"It is not the refugees or asylum seekers who you have to regulate, it is the smugglers and human traffickers who should be brought to justice and punished," Ban said during a speech before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in regard to the increase of illegal immigrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea into Europe.
Ban said that the international community's common responsibility was to act before more lives were lost. "I'm alarmed by the plight of migrants, refugee-seekers," Ban said.
He called on PACE lawmakers to advocate settling the crisis of migrants and refugees crossing the Mediterranean and to quell anti-migrant rhetoric that some European countries have voiced.
"We must reject the anti-migrant rhetoric," he said, adding that 60 million people are displaced globally.
On Monday, EU foreign ministers agreed to launch a naval mission, called the EUNAVFOR Med operation, to combat gangs of human traffickers, which transport scores of migrants from Libya to European coasts.
The EU mission, which envisages the seizure of ships trafficking undocumented migrants from North Africa, has attracted criticism from the United Nations and NGOs, as the decision was made without the consent of the Libyan government or UN mandate.
