El Salvador - IOM El Salvador this week participated in the National Forum on Migration and Peace, organized by the Scalabrini International Migration Network (SIMN).

The meeting served as a platform for discussion, from a Human Rights focus, on the need to provide comprehensive responses to the causes that enhance irregular migration and internal displacement, to provide an analysis of the existing protection mechanisms and approach to different needs of the vulnerable mobile populations.

The event was attended by representatives of agencies of the UN system, government institutions, civil society and academia, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Migration, the Ombudsman of Human Rights, the Institute for Migrants, the Independent Monitoring Group of El Salvador, and the Salvadoran Committee of Families of Disappeared and Dead Migrants.

IOM’s Chief of Mission to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, Jorge Peraza Breedy told delegates that "the protection, dignity and welfare of the migrant population requires local, national and regional action. Comprehensive assistance cannot be provided in isolation.”

The meeting also served as a space to address the vulnerability of applicants for refugee status and international protection; also the national and regional legislative initiatives and the building of comprehensive policy for the protection of human rights of migrants; the situation of migrant children and adolescents; and context analysis of returnees in El Salvador.

"I think these initiatives enrich us and allow us to generate synergies for the future. There is still much ground to plow in our history, but working together we can begin to build a reality that gives peace to the migrants, wherever they arrive, and that their fundamental right to develop as a person is guaranteed,” said Director of the Pastoral Centre for Migrants and Regional Representative SIMN Mauro Verzeletti.

IOM provided logistical support to the SIMN Network for the event, as part of its regional program Strengthening Protection Capacity and Assistance to Migrants in Conditions of Vulnerability in Mesoamerica, funded by the US State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM).

For more information, please contact José Miguel Gómez at IOM El Salvador, Tel. +503 2521-0540, Email: miggomez@iom.int. Or Alba Miriam Amaya at IOM El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, Tel. +503 2521-0556, Email: aamaya@iom.int