Bohtar, Khatlon – Today, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) jointly with government partner - Migration Service at Oblast Level launched a three-days training on reintegration of returned migrants. The training brought together 17 specialists from Migration Service and civil society members of five districts of Khatlon region.

In her opening speech, representative from IOM Tajikistan stressed about the importance of training for participants considering current migration development with COVID-19, which forced some Tajik migrant workers to leave Russia for Tajikistan due to loss of job and income. She underlined that returned migrants and those with reentry ban to Russian Federation face enormous amount of stress due to limited job options and lacking of awareness about services available in their community. The training is aimed at building capacity of government partners and civil society on local level on how to run group reintegration sessions for migrants, including facilitation skills, effective communication with vulnerable migrants experiencing psychological problems and referral.

Head of Migration Service at Oblast Level emphasized about equipping returned migrants with necessary job skills that could help them to find jobs inside Tajikistan and beyond. The group reintegration sessions will be a good platform for raising awareness of returned migrants about available services in relation to vocational training, certification of job skills and other assistance that increase their chance for successful reintegration.

Following the reintegration training, the participants are expected to run group reintegration planning sessions for 2500 returned migrants in five districts of Khatlon by end of April 2021.

The training is supported through UK funding under the “Community Stabilization through Returned Migrant Reintegration in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan During and After COVID-19”.

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For more information please contact: Ms. Zebigul Shekhova, Senior Project Assistant, IOM Tajikistan, at zshekhova@iom.int