Strengthening the Knowledge Base to better Protect and Assist Migrants in a Situation of Vulnerability in Mali

This project will focus specifically on the case of Mali, a key origin and transit country on the West African Migratory route and will focus on 2 main strategic areas: • Improve the quality, collection and sharing of data on irregular migration flows in the country; • Enhance migrants’ protection by improving the capacity of the Government of Mali and civil society actors to identify vulnerable migrants in need of protection assistance. Beyond the activities underlined in this document, the proposed action intends to prepare the ground work for future, longer term programming expected to be implemented through the establishment of Migration Response and Resource Mechanisms (MRRM) in Mali and throughout West Africa. These mechanisms aim at providing comprehensive frameworks of action for coordinated migrant protection, assistance and information services and at providing operational support to government authorities to address complex migratory flows, facilitate the identification and registration of migrants, and support data collection to feed into evidence-based policy and programming (while respecting national and IOM Data Protection Principles). Eventually, the MRRM will seek to provide direct assistance and support services to the most vulnerable migrants; counselling; facilitation of contact with families, consular offices and referral services, according to, and based on, needs identified. Finally, Migration Response and Resource Mechanisms (MRRM) also provide information and awareness-raising on the risks of irregular migration (including trafficking in persons), the available channels for legal migration, as well as rights and obligations of both States and migrants. In the framework of this proposal, IOM will promote an approach to the MRRM based on national ownership. In that sense, actors in Mali will be provided with the support and expertise to subsequently own any longer term migration initiative. Although the resources available to this specific project will not enable IOM to support the full establishment of MRRM, the approach adopted for the purpose of this action remains in line with the mechanism’s rationale. The actions proposed in this document focus on strengthening the capacity of the government to provide quality information on migration patterns to the international community and civil society actors .