Connectivity and Migration

The association ‘Migration and Development’ is a civil society organization which has been engaged in integrated and participative development with migrants in southern Morocco for many years. Its engagement is anchored in the intention of enhancing the synergies between migrants and their territories in their community of origin. As such, the communities of origin are strongly involved in defining their needs and ensuring that migrants’ contributions are factored in when seeking to contribute to the development of communities of origin.

The CTRS project is an initiative of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in Tunisia. The project interventions focus on cooperation with the Tunisian Government in line with its efforts in strengthening Tunisia’s links with its diaspora and to promoting the diaspora’s engagement in Tunisia’s national and local development.

The project aims at acknowledging the competences and skills of Tunisians living in Switzerland with view to strengthening their contribution to the socio-economic development of Tunisia in four areas:

This project is a part of a larger multi-year intervention “Moldova – Making the Most of Migration”, funded by the Swiss Development Cooperation and beginning in mid-2015.

The project is implemented in partnership between IOM Moldova and the Diaspora Relations Bureau (BRD) in synergy and close coordination with the two other SDC commissioned project (implemented by UNDP and IASCI).

The program’s overarching strategic goal is to improve the overall market for remittances and ultimately achieve further financial inclusion, broader usage of electronic payments and the reduction of the cost of remittances while maintaining financial stability. This will allow migrants and their families a net increase of the available resources for their daily needs, savings as well as investments.

The program is executed by the World Bank’s Financial Infrastructure and Remittances Service Line, which is part of the joint WB/IFC Finance and Markets Global Practice.

The SECO Start-up Fund is a risk capital vehicle launched in 1997 by the Swiss Goverment. The Fund is fully owned by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and is an instrument of SECO’s Economic Cooperation and Development Division. The Fund is managed by FinanceContact Ltd., a Zürich-based private management company.

TawiPay (www.tawipay.com) is a pilot money transfer project that started in 2015. Its main goal is to increase transparency in remittance channels. The Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) financed the establishment of the two remittance channels, Switzerland–Serbia and Switzerland–Bosnia. The project’s objective is to enable migrants/diaspora communities to reduce the cost of sending money to their home countries.

6Degree.org is a crowdfunding portal to support voluntary return and sustainable integration of human trafficking victims launched in 2015 through a partnership between IOM and Microsoft. The site is backed by Microsoft Azure cloud-computing platform, while IOM provides the resources to help human trafficking victims. The platform meets IOM`s strict requirements for victim privacy and protection and is in place not only help victims, but also to raise awareness for human trafficking and enhance the global commitment to stopping it.

The mission of the interactive media platform albinfo.ch is twofold:

a) Active Citizenship and harmonious integration of people and ethnic Albanian populations in Switzerland

The purpose of albinfo.ch is to be used as a communication tool through free and convenient access to quality non-partisan information and services.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has a number of projects around the globe aimed at facilitating and enhancing the effectiveness of diaspora investment in local economies, including:

Switzerland supports Moldova in maximizing the positive impact of migration on the country`s socio-economic development. This is done by implementing a program with three interlinked components: