Albania placed priority on improving and fully implementing legislation in the migration field. Actions in this sector were planned through national, bilateral and multilateral initiatives, including the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe's Asylum and Migration Support Unit and the emerging EC CARDS programme. Various Albanian ministries and agencies were asked to assist or participate in these initiatives, but each has limited capacity. Therefore, the Government of Albania requested IOM’s assistance in meeting these requests. Through this pilot project, IOM established within the IOM Tirana Office a Migration Management Support Unit (MMSU), which would complement and build upon the experience of the unit already established by IOM in Belgrade.
The initial role of the Unit was to provide support to the Government of Albania for their participation in the various processes and activities geared towards improvements in the migration sector of governance. In its pilot phase, the MMSU provided document procurement, translation, meeting support, and other services to Albania and to the external agencies and teams requesting Albanian participation in various initiatives. The production of regular situation reports summarizing ongoing, completed and planned actions in migration management areas was also an important task of the Unit and contributed to a clearer view of the state of play of the various initiatives. Expansion of services of the MMSU to provide full technical support to Albania in migration matters, including significant cooperative capacity-building activities, would be considered, based on the results of the pilot phase activities funded through this project.