IOM

Helping the migrations and approaching the EU


The International Organization for Migrations -IOM has been working in Macedonia since 1999 - this organization, as many others, arrived in Macedonia after the Kosovo crisis.

IOM is an intergovernmental and non-profitable organization, founded in 1951 in Geneva, where it has its headquarters today. There are 93 member-countries and 30 monitoring-countries. Macedonia and the European Union are in the second category.

The goal of this organization is to help governments facing migration problems.

As Mr. Tomaso de Cataldo from the IOM office in Macedonia said, this organization helps government to handle the migration problems in times of crisis, return the migrants, realize their rights or labour migration (season workers), illegal migrations, trade with people and other aspects of this problem.

IOM has been working in Macedonia on several programmes, financed by different donors.

What Mr. Cataldo emphasized as a long-term strategy for Macedonia is supporting the EU Stabilization and Association Agreement implementation. IOM will help Macedonia in many ways to approach the EU membership.

Apart from the Government, they realize cooperation with Macedonian NGOs because they find them an important segment in the civic society development and stability of the country. It is important to support people in finding solutions to their problems themselves, not always turning to foreign organizations.

IOM has implemented several informative campaigns on the trade with people problem in Macedonia, provided training for the police, worked on advocating in the field of migrations, borders management, etc.

An important project that has been implemented in Macedonia in cooperation with state bodies, the non-governmental organizations and the victims themselves is the project for fight against trade with people. In IOM, they consider this project important in long-terms framework. They have also been implementing successfully the Initiative for Building Trust, which started last year, as a long-term project.

In the realization of all these activities, IOM is supported by governments of EU countries, Canada, USA, Japan and other donors. 
 

M.Ivanova