General Objectives

To follow up on the findings from the II Congress on Women in Migration: Gender, Human Rights and Empowerment, and on the advances in the implementation of the Guidelines on Assistance and Protection of Women in the Context of Migration, in order to enrich and shape the III Regional Congress on Women in Migration Contexts, to be held in September 2021.

Specific Objectives

1. To present the results derived from the II Congress on Women in Migration Contexts as well as the follow-up actions, including research/actions being led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), together with IOM and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) under the Regional Spotlight Initiative.
2. To contextualize the results within the framework of the COVID-19 pandemic, which affects the entire world and which has had disproportionate consequences for women, female adolescents and girls, including those in migration contexts.
3. To establish dialogue among the RCM Member Countries on the advances and challenges in the implementation of the Guidelines on Assistance and Protection of Women in the Context of Migration and to identify the priority topics to be addressed during the III Regional Congress on Migrant Women in Migration Contexts.

General Objective

To propose a regional strategy for the attention to irregular and mass migration, based on three monitoring and evaluation meetings (April-July-October) to seek to identify the main trends and issues around these flows in the region, which require urgent and comprehensive attention under the principles of shared responsibility, respect for the human rights, national sovereignty, and international cooperation.

Specific objectives

- Generate a continuous space for dialogue and exchange that allows the consolidation of a fluid and effective communication among Member Countries, regarding the attention and protection of massive and irregular migratory flows.
- Identify topics of priority attention, such as actions and programs of some countries that can be replicated at the regional level and strategies for attention to massive flows.
- Propose strategies for the coordination and timely monitoring of mass and irregular migration events that impact the various countries of the region.
- Design a joint strategy for the attention and protection of migrants who make up the massive irregular flows in the region.

General Objective of the Exchange

Offer input to build governmental capacities of the RCM Member Countries for designing, implementing, and monitoring mechanisms for safe, orderly, and regular labor migration, as a means to guarantee the fair hiring of migrant workers and the protection of their rights.

Specific Objectives

1. Socialize the current status of existing mechanisms in the Region for facilitating safe, orderly, and regular labor migration, as well as their effects on migratory dynamics, based on the principal findings and recommendations of the IOM study Labor Migration Mechanisms in Mesoamerica (2021).
2. Identify areas for improving existing governmental capacities of the RCM Member Countries specifically related to Bilateral Labor Migration Agreements (BLMA).  To that end, the BLMA Toolkit jointly developed by the IOM and the ILO is available to be used at the national level to strengthen the areas identified during the Regional Exchange.
3. Exchange information regarding good practices and lessons learned in the RCM Member Countries regarding the negotiation and implementation of labor migration mechanisms in countries with transit, destination, and return migration, as initiatives that promote the hiring of labor migrants and the protection of their rights, including groups in situations of vulnerability such as returnees and people with international protection to promote integration into the societies of destination and origin.

GENERAL OBJECTIVE

The workshop aims to provide follow-up on the actions agreed upon in the Work Plan of the Liaison Officers Network to Combat Migrant Smuggling and Trafficking in Persons of the Regional Conference on Migration, prioritizing those that are necessary to meet the objectives defined in this document.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

This workshop is intended to provide a space for dialogue and exchange for the member countries of RCM, with the following specific objectives:

• To share the advances each country is making in the fight against migrant smuggling which contribute to the accomplishment of the counter-smuggling Work Plan.
• To identify priority actions in the Work Plan which should be implemented at the national and regional level in order to accomplish it.
• To promote the exchange of best practices on the issue between different countries, with the goal of identifying those actions which could be adapted to other contextual spaces and which could have effective results within the objectives of the counter-smuggling Work Plan.
• To promote collaboration and complementarity with other regional organizations that address the issue in some way (for example, the Regional Coalition against Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling; the Commission of Police Chiefs and Directors of Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Colombia; the Ad-Hoc Working Group on Extra-Regional Migrants (RCM), etc.

The general objective of the event is to provide a space for dialogue to discuss challenges and opportunities and exchange experiences (policies and programmes), with the aim of strengthening the design and implementation of policies on governance of regular, safe and planned migration in the Member Countries of the Regional Conference on Migration (RCM).

The workshop is oriented towards representatives (sub-directors or chiefs of departments) from migration authorities, ministries of labor and ministries of foreign affairs of the RCM Member Countries.

The flow of extra-regional migrants has been a constant topic in the region since the beginning of the Regional Conference on Migration (RCM). Also, its continuous growth has led Member Countries to open a fundamental space within their discussions in the framework of the RCM.

The passport workshop will offer an opportunity for Canada, Mexico and other interested RCM member countries, to discuss and understand possible threats in all aspects of the travel document issuance process; how threats can be dealt with and for participants to share their best practices and lessons learned regarding implementation of their respective passport systems.