The Western Balkans Route, a major transit migration route, particularly for migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and a number of North African countries, was effectively closed by governments along that route. This decision has left a number of transiting migrants stranded, potentially exposed to extreme conditions and unprotected from abuse and exploitation. Such individuals may wish to return to their countries of origin and should be provided with return assistance in order to be able to do so in a safe and dignified manner. Additionally, it is possible that pressure along those route may again increase, leading to another influx of migrants and refugees.
The aforementioned developments have put additional pressure on Turkey and Greece where large numbers of migrants and refugees now create irregular migration pressure onto the recently closed route. Bearing that in mind, the objective of the project is to support the development of AVRR mechanisms, by building the capacities of national actors in the Western Balkans region in order to offer a protection-sensitive response to stranded migrants, rejected asylum seekers, and irregular migrants.
The project aims to support and complement the activities foreseen by the IPA II Multi-country action programme 2014 - Regional Support to Protection-Sensitive Migration Management in the Western Balkans and Turkey (IPA II), which contains an AVRR component. The project will be carried out in close cooperation with the IPA II implementing partners, Frontex, EASO, and UNHCR, in order to ensure the coordination, identification and utilization of synergies, and the avoidance of overlap.
The project will organize a series of trainings in the region for officers from target countries to transfer knowledge to other migration management offices on national AVRR procedures, as well as to build regional capacity on a number of AVRR-related topics, such as building synergies among different AVRR practitioners, including the NGO sector. These outputs will aim to strengthen the overall capacities of target countries to engage and carry out AVRR related activities, leading consequently to AVRR mechanism firmly established and operationalized. Experts will be engaged at various stages of the project, providing essential experience and expertise to project management, but also guiding the implementation the activities and by leading the workshops. The project will support the operationalization on a national level of AVRR mechanisms developed at the regional level under the IPA II Regional Project, contribute to the IPA II envisaged direct assistance to stranded migrants in the form of assisted voluntary return, and support long term sustainability and national ownership of these mechanisms.