Today marks the International Migrants Day

Today marks the International Migrants Day

Today marks International Migrants Day (18 December 2023), where we reflect on and celebrate the contributions of millions of migrants worldwide. This years theme is ‘Act today’. People on the move are powerful drivers for development in both their origin and destination countries, as workers, students, entrepreneurs, family members, artists, and much more. Migrants often maintain strong connections to their home countries while embracing their new communities, where they bring a wealth of knowledge, experience and skill.

If managed well, mobility can be a cornerstone of sustainable development, prosperity and progress. Unlocking migration’s potential is key to accelerating efforts to meet the significant challenges of the 2030 Agenda articulated during the Sustainable Development Goal summit in New York in September 2023, for the benefit of all.

There is an urgent need for the international community to provide people-centred and evidence-based solutions for people to remain in their communities, and for those who want to or must move.

The recently completed COP28 summit in Dubai provided the opportunity for IOM to advocate again for the impact of climate change on migrants to be a central part of this discussion. Promoting equal and inclusive partnerships with migrants, women, persons with disabilities and communities, while emphasizing the role of youth, is now more critical than ever.

Every person can make a difference. Every person can be an agent of change. Together, our collective actions today, will prepare us for a better tomorrow.

Harnessing the power of sport for refugee inclusion

Last week the largest international gathering on refugees took place in Geneva, the Global Refugee Forum 2023. This year’s forum, the second edition after the first GRF in 2019, a high-level event on Sport, “Breaking Barriers: Realizing the Potential of Sport for Inclusion and Protection”, brought sport actors together to demonstrate their support for refugees and the contribution of sport in refugee situations.

The physical benefits of playing a sport are well known to anyone who’s kicked a ball or swung a racket. But for refugees, sport can offer much more – creating social ties in their new communities and providing a source of strength and purpose. 

To harness these and other benefits, the Scort Foundation, the Olympic Refuge Foundation and UNHCR are leading the the Multi-stakeholder Pledge on Sport for Inclusion and Protection. The pledge, brings together sport federations, governments, private sector actors and others offering resources and expertise to improve the lives of refugees and host communities through sport. 

Welcome through Football

The Welcome through Football project aims to assist in the integration and inclusion of recently arrived young refugees, asylum seekers and young people with a migrant background. In the project EFDN will develop and test a European methodology that uses football as a tool to reach refugees and migrants from different ages (7-25 years old) to get them physically and social active in European communities. The project also wants to train the staff members of participating organisations in this new methodology and to develop a Welcome through Football Practitioners Guide with train the trainer courses that are accessible for free and widely used by interested organisations and sport clubs in Europe.

The general objective of this Welcome Through Football project is to provide 675 young refugees and asylum seekers capacity building opportunities to achieve inclusive and peaceful societies, to share best practice programmes and methodologies, identify critical success factors and further develop our comprehensive 3 step football based social inclusion Methodology that can be used by professional and grassroots football clubs in the delivery of football based community programmes that supports the inclusion of refugees and asylum seekers and promotes the acceptance of refugees and immigrants in the European society.