News

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a global commitment to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure peace and prosperity for all people by 2030. Central to achieving these goals is the commitment that no one should be left behind, especially vulnerable groups like women and girls.

Training government officers to act as information providers for community members regarding safe migration is a conventional yet highly effective approach to addressing the complexities of the critical issue that is irregular migration. This method entails several advantages that can significantly contribute to the safety and well-being of those who are contemplating migration for employment.

 

Information dissemination is an art form that needs proper understanding of the audience as well as the message. Without a correct understanding of both, information dissemination is fruitless. Going along with this theory, International Organization for Migration (IOM) has always utilized different mechanisms to reach their target audience to disseminate messages regarding safe and orderly migration.

Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 rapidly at a global level, many countries, especially the most popular key migration hotspots for irregular migrants and human smuggling agents in Sri Lanka, turned out to be locations of high risk to migrate. As the COVID-19 spread rapidly spread across the globe by leaving only very few countries and their population aside, the people who were residing in the COVID-19 vulnerable regions became further vulnerable due to lack of access to medical health facilities, essential food supply due to mandatory quarantine procedures of the host country.

Many innovative information outreach campaigns were specially designed to support the growing dilemmas on safe and regular migration knowledge among the Sri Lankan population amidst the COVID-19 outbreak in Sri Lanka. As it is a global phenomenon leading to life threatening situation for Sri Lankan migrants living abroad as well as potential migrants willing to depart Sri Lanka for further work, study and to live, the safe migration campaign continued to provide hotline support for all vulnerable information seeking callers through work from home arrangements amidst all challenges.

Being a famous tourist destination in the Indian Ocean, it was greatly evident that the global COVID-19 pandemic could have adverse effects in Sri Lanka with the growing numbers of tourists visiting the country from the most vulnerable key locations of the COVID-19 spread. Sri Lanka had only one case of Corona patients reported during the end of February 2020 and it was a tourist from China who was fully cured under the Sri Lankan medical facilities with proper isolation mechanisms and great care.

Considering the growing numbers of human smugglers working towards promoting irregular migration messages in the island amidst the global outbreak of the Corona virus, several safe migration related community engagement activities and response generation mechanisms were design

Pahiyankadawala is a small remote village in Anuradhapura District in the North Central Province in Sri Lanka and the population of the area mostly seem to be migrant workers serving in foreign countries. The school targeted to conduct the safe migration awareness session facilitates a large number of under privileged students in the area with low income rates.

As a follow-up to the phone survey conducted under Outcome 2, IOM organized an interactive session with 22 returnees (returned under GAIM IV and V) and their families. The aim was to further understand the underlying push and pull factors that had made them to migrate abroad in irregular means and to further adapt outreach strategies in transit countries to respond to the needs of Canada-bound migrants stranded in third countries

Football is a popular sport among the youth in Jaffna district where an area identified with high number of migrants attempting use irregular migration methods. The safe migration campaigning team organized an awareness raising mass information campaign through a series of football matches by targeting more than 1300 individuals in the audience.

Many of the female population in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka has a tendency to engage with crossword puzzles appearing in the regional newspapers. Usually, they are highly skillful in filling such puzzles by gathering knowledge from newspaper articles.

Jaffna district is identified as one of the key areas in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka with a significant population prone towards irregular migration attempts. The safe migration campaigning team identified their vulnerabilities and organized an awareness raising mass information campaign targeting more than 10,000 individuals visiting the most renowned Nallur Hindu religious festival in Jaffna which took place from August 21-30,2019.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) Sri Lanka has been conducting special information outreach campaigns popularly known as safe migration campaigns (SMC) to curb the irregular migration attempts of Sri Lankans through irregular channels. The Global Assistance to Irregular Migrants (GAIM), which is running in its fifth phase, funds this programme. The campaign informs the benefits of safe and regular migration and the ill effects of irregular migration by targeting students, youth, government officials, community leaders, and communities prone to irregular migration. 

The IOM involved in the above SMC campaign believes that proper guidance to career of an individual defines a comprehensive, developmental program designed to assist him or her in making and implementing informed educational and occupational choices. It is very much important in the current context of irregular migration attempts taken by the young unemployed youth in Sri Lanka.

After spending many years serving on the front lines during Sri Lanka's brutal 26-year civil war, finally Ravi had completed his one year program at the government rehabilitation camp in Southern Sri Lanka. As he left the camp, he focused on the sign posted above the exit: ‘No matter how much time you have wasted in the past, you still have tomorrow'. With that thought in mind, he left the camp and prepared to start his life afresh.

When she first heard about the success story of her neighbours who migrated recently to Canada from a rural village in Killinochchi, Sri Lanka, Shivani thought she had found a solution to her troubles.