Practices by Stakeholder 1

Training and capacity building of State actors

State actors who could benefit from training and capacity building on different aspects related to better protecting migrants in countries experiencing conflicts or natural disasters include:

• Immigration authorities;
• Consular and diplomatic personnel;
• Labor authorities;
• Prevention, preparedness, and emergency response actors;
• Recovery and reconstruction actors;
• Security, border management, armed forces, and police;
• Welfare officers;
• Local authorities;
• Health care service providers.

Training and capacity building themes

State actors and other stakeholders may benefit from training and capacity building on a range of themes, including:

• Mapping migrant community profiles;
• Ways to reach out to migrant communities, including to those in an irregular immigration status;
• Assessing and addressing migrants’ conditions of vulnerability and needs;
• Evaluating capacities and strengths of other stakeholders;
• Targeting responses to address needs of particular migrant populations, such as victims of trafficking, migrants with disabilities, elderly migrants, and child migrants, including unaccompanied or separated children;
• Engaging migrants in crisis preparedness and response;
• Developing contingency and evacuation plans that incorporate migrants;
• Mainstreaming migrants’ protection in prevention, preparedness, emergency response, and post-crisis recovery, including developing or refining migrant-sensitive crisis preparedness and response laws, policies, and procedures;
• Creating registries of linguistically and culturally sensitive staff for communicating with and assisting migrants during emergencies.

Peer-to-peer exchanges for capacity building and learning

Peer-to-peer exchanges are usually designed to help stakeholders learn from similar actors or actors who have undergone relevant experiences. Peer-to-peer exchanges may benefit from:

• Different stakeholders tackling similar challenges from different perspectives, such as States, private sector actors, international organizations, and civil society;
• Personal relationships and trust among stakeholders that allow frank and open peerto-peer exchanges;
• Mechanisms for sharing lessons.

Programs to build the capacity of migrant organizations to assist migrants, including through trainthe-trainer programs

Migrant organizations have knowledge of the local community as well as language skills and familiarity with migrants’ cultural norms. They have local connections that enable them to reach migrants who may be missed by others, including migrants in an irregular immigration situation. Activities to build the capacity of migrant organizations include:

• Offering training on prevention, preparedness, and emergency response;
• Encouraging exchanges about programs and practices implemented to help migrants during crises;
• Providing funding to enable migrant organizations to develop contingency plans;
• Forming partnerships between migrant organizations and local responders to enable more effective communication of information about crises;
• Offering ‘training of trainers’ to ensure knowledge is passed on within migrant organizations and networks.

Dedicated funds to protect migrants

Funding may be needed to address emergency phase needs, including evacuation, return, medical care, and temporary board and lodging as well as post-crisis needs, including reintegration assistance and services. Funding could be gathered through:

• Dedicated funds that seek voluntary contributions from employers, recruiters, placement agencies, and migrants;
• Online funding platforms that allow fundraising;
• Loans from financial institutions;
• Financial, in-kind, and asset donations or loans;
• Loans from States or international or regional banks and institutions, and private sector actors;
• Contributions from diaspora;
• Grants.

Referral mechanisms and access to asylum procedures during crises

During a crisis, migrants may require specialized services in the host State, in transit or, if relocated or evacuated, on arrival. Capacity building to prepare for crises could include developing the capacity to assess migrants with particular needs and identify special service providers as well as developing clear procedures to follow when making referrals. Capacity to make referrals may be required for migrants requesting medical assistance, unaccompanied or separated migrant children, victims of trafficking, migrants who have suffered psychosocial trauma and migrants with disabilities, among others. Pre-establishing relationships between relevant actors responding to the needs of migrants and national or international protection systems for refugees and stateless persons ensures that referral procedures function well and smoothly during crises. In establishing a referral system, factors to consider include:

• Establishing a memorandum of understanding or standard operating procedures between stakeholders assisting migrants and the State’s asylum mechanism, detailing roles and responsibilities and facilitating predictable actions;
• Designating referral focal points to ensure swift communication;
• Ensuring preliminary screenings to enable rapid identification of needs;
• Training involved actors on the mechanism and its procedures;
• Putting in place safeguards to ensure best interest of the child is a primary consideration in the choice of referrals made for unaccompanied or separated children (e.g., through best interest assessments);
• Putting in place safeguards to ensure that referral procedures respect confidentiality of information and data.

Monitoring and evaluation of crisis response

Evaluations of responses to natural disasters or conflicts may not take into account migrants’ particular situation. As a result, evaluations specifically tailored to measuring the effectiveness of responses to migrants’ needs may be required. Those creating migrant-sensitive evaluations of crisis response could consider:

• Developing clear objectives related to the effectiveness of crisis responses as they pertain to migrants as a distinct population with specific needs;
• Including migrant populations in evaluations that assess the overall crisis response to ensure a sufficiently large number of migrants is included in any sample or survey;
• Involving migrant groups and civil society actors that work closely with migrant populations in evaluation exercises;
• The short-, medium- and long-term effects of crisis response on migrant populations, including needs related to evacuation and reintegration;
• Assessing institutional responses towards migrants, including coordination among multiple stakeholders involved in crisis response;
• Articulating lessons learned as they relate to migrant populations;
• Making recommendations to improve crisis-related responses for migrants;
• Developing simple feedback and complaint mechanisms to encourage the participation of migrants in crisis-related response evaluations.