IOM and the municipal government of Ciudad Juarez, on Mexico's
northern border, have signed a cooperation agreement to help
strengthen migration-related programmes carried out through the
Office of Municipal Coordination for Assistance to Migrants (CAM).

The new agreement provides for close cooperation between the
local government and IOM and will widen the reintegration services
offered to migrants returning through Ciudad Juarez including
assistance with employment opportunities, vocational training,
validation of school and university titles and micro enterprise
loans.

The  IOM office in Ciudad Juarez,  one of three in
Mexico, opened in June 2010 in support  of  the National
Migration Institute (INM by its Spanish acronym) Humane
Repatriation Programme which provides assistance to more than
450,000 Mexican migrants returned from the United States each
year.

Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.5 million, is located across the Rio
Grande from El Paso, Texas.  Although the number of returnees
to the city has decreased considerably since its peak in 2009 due
to recent security concerns, some 13,000 migrants were returned to
Ciudad Juarez in 2010 and the support services provided by the
municipality continue to play a vital role in ensuring the humane
and successful reintegration of returnees.

Thomas Lothar Weiss, IOM Chief of Mission in Mexico explains:
"The agreement between the municipality and IOM will support joint
efforts at developing activities to assist migrants in extremely
vulnerable situations, as well as to foster the positive aspects
and opportunities associated with sound and orderly migratory
practices.  This agreement is also part of wider efforts by
IOM to reinforce partnerships among actors working for the
protection of migrant populations in Mexico."

Many of the returning migrants have lived abroad for more than a
decade making it necessary to ensure effective coordination between
institutions from the government, civil society and the private
sector providing support services to migrants during the return and
reintegration process.

The cooperation agreement seeks to improve the understanding of
migration trends along Mexico's northern border through joint
efforts to systematize and analyze migration data to produce policy
relevant research.

As part of the agreement, IOM will provide technical assistance
to enhance capacity in areas such as the design, implementation and
evaluation of migrant service programmes. The programmes will
target returned migrants, victims of human trafficking, so called
"niños de circuito" – children used by criminal gangs
to traffic drugs and migrants across the border, and internal
migrants from other parts of Mexico who came to work in the
maquilas or assembly plants in Ciudad Juarez during the economic
boom in the 1980s.

IOM will  also provide the CAM office  with in-kind
support  including basic hygiene kits and winter clothing
packages to meet the most basic and  immediate needs of
returning migrants who are coping with extreme weather conditions
in northern Mexico. In-kind assistance will also support the
Municipality of Juarez in providing basic medical assistance to
migrants such as test kits for HIV, pregnancy and glucose
levels.

For more information please contact:

Jeremy Mac Gillivray

IOM Mexico

Tel: +52 55 5536 3922

E-mail: "mailto:jmacgillivray@iom.int">jmacgillivray@iom.int