The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation supports the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in strengthening Western Balkans (WB) countries on the migration governance.

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina – The IOM is launching a 1.5 million EUR project with funding from the Migrations Fund of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. The project will support State authorities in the Western Balkans (WB) towards more evidence-based, protection-sensitive and sustainable community-led migration response.

The 18-month project “Strengthening the community and evidence-based migration response in Bosnia and Herzegovina and enhancing data collection on migrants in the Western Balkans” builds on three main outcomes: to generate up-to-date data on mixed migration flows and make it available to key stakeholders in the WB; to support Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) State authorities provide adequate accommodation and address capacity gaps for the identification, screening and registration of migrants; and to engage socially responsible enterprises in BiH to improve the environmental sustainability and economic efficiency of temporary reception centres.

To enable the policymakers, practitioners and frontline actors provide a more tailored assistance, the project will support regional efforts to implement the migrants’ presence methodology, which is part of IOM’s global Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) system, to collect and analyze data on the number of irregular migrants inside and outside of official reception centres and disseminate critical multilayered information on the mobility, vulnerabilities and needs of migrants.

Furthermore, the project will support the State authorities of BiH through technical assistance and knowledge transfer for the management of the new temporary reception centre Lipa in Una-Sana Canton, in a protection-sensitive manner and in coordination with all relevant national and international partners.

Lastly, the project will facilitate the piloting of social entrepreneurship initiatives to contribute to the migration response in BiH. Using environmental sustainability and economic efficiency as guiding principles for the pilots, the project will seek to strengthen civic activism and social cohesion between host communities and the migrant population through the provision of community-led services in reception facilities.