By Saio Marrah
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Sierra Leone has solidified a working partnership with Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Social Welfare after both parties signed a partnership agreement.
At the signing ceremony of the agreement at the Social Welfare ministry in Freetown on Monday 15th April 2024, the Head of IOM in the country, Christos Christodoulides said he thought about concretising the partnership after understanding that there had been no pre-existing official partnership between the two institutions.
He said officiating the partnership would lead to several programmes which two parties would be working on, among which he said is counter trafficking.
The other major area is repatriating and supporting Sierra Leoneans migrants who are stranded and find themselves in difficult situations abroad. Christodoulides said he is optimistic it will lead to enhancing the work between the two entities by supporting the most vulnerable people.
Minister of Social Welfare, Melrose Karminty talked about how the partnership emanated from a beach cleaning exercise, which was done in collaboration with the IOM.
Karminty also pointed out that IOM has been doing extremely well in bringing home migrants who found themselves in difficult situations abroad.
She also applauded IOM for supporting the ministry in the legislative framework on Human Trafficking Act of 2022.
The minister therefore described the formalization of their partnership as a step in the right direction and an important milestone.
According to her, the partnership is not Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), but an agreement on how they want to work amicably so that each one of the two parties would know their roles and how they would want to implement their programmes.
She said the issue of human trafficking is something that is difficult to handle, and that countries cannot do it on their own so they need partners to help.
She said some of those helps include identifying where the migrants are, and to be able to gather resources to support their repatriation. “So for us IOM has been very critical,” she added.
The minister encouraged people to go through the right channel in migrating as that is when the government would be able to account for them.
Copyright © 2024 Politico (24/04/24)
