Immigration and Border Management

Border officials are the first persons migrants encounter at their destination, most likely.

Ensuring that they are aware of migrants’ rights and international standards is paramount to promote safe and well-managed migration. Complemented by efficient policies and structures, this enables to contrast smuggling and identify victims of trafficking. For this purpose, IOM facilitates the dialogue between migrants’, countries of origin and the regional governments to ease the legitimate cross-border flows of people and goods.

In the region, we integrate our substantial technical expertise and border management experience with the European Commission’s concept of Integrated Border Management.

We assist requesting governments to institute appropriate migration governance and management by creating policy, legislation, administrative structures, operational systems and providing the human resources necessary to respond effectively to diverse migration challenges.

One of the key challenges we address in the region is the response to irregular and mixed migration flows. We therefore provide EU agencies and Member States with technical assistance from a human rights perspective in the development of training material and through joint operations.

We also support our partners through data management, knowledge sharing, capacity building, networking and easing the communication with countries of origin, transit and destination.