El Salvador

The Western Hemisphere Regional Migration Program (WHP) is a U.S. government-supported program that has operated since 2011.  The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration provides funding as a contribution to IOM to implement the program.

Many historic town and city centers in El Salvador have suffered years of neglect and a lack of investment. Through a program of training, funding and collaboration, a network of organizations including FUNDASAL (the Salvadorian foundation for development and adequate housing), FESCOVAM (the Salvadorian federation of mutual aid housing cooperatives) and FUCVAM (the Uruguayan federation of mutual aid housing cooperatives) has worked to help the local community to set up the first five mutual aid housing cooperatives in the city’s historic center.

FAO is supporting the sustainable reintegration of returnees through livelihoods support and a large-scale project with the Green Climate Fund aimed at increasing climate resilience of smallholder farmers and food systems in El Salvador. The project seeks to boost resilience of family farmers by transforming food systems and improving rural infrastructure, thus addressing an adverse driver of migration.

Programs of employment creation for migrants, and economic and psychosocial integration projects for returnees offer returned migrants in El Salvador access to local job-search databases, vocational training, skills accreditation, and seed grants up to USD 3,500 for entrepreneurial projects.

The National Network of Returned Entrepreneurs (RENACERES) offers counseling and seed capital to migrants who demonstrate potential to establish new businesses or projects.

FAO supports rural youthwith alternatives to migration in a number of countries through fostering decent rural employment in sustainable agriculture and agribusiness along value chains.

Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras agreed to lay the foundation for an understanding on establishing a Comprehensive Development Plan that will promote development and create opportunities in the region, in order to help prevent migration while simultaneously attacking its structural causes.

The government of El Salvador, through the experience of linking migration with development seeks a productive, economic, social and cultural integration of migrants and their families; as well as the guarantee of their economic, social and cultural rights. 

The CSO Regional Development Agencies of Morazán and La Unión in El Salvador worked with some municipalities and diaspora in the US to support youth in starting up their own businesses and cooperatives, which included access to social finance.

This case study draws on good practice from projects supported by the UN Joint Migration and Development Initiative (JMDI) in El Salvador and explores how to establish youth-led businesses at the local level, with support from the diaspora, as a vehicle to promote local development and provide alternatives to irregular migration.

The Joint Migration and Development Initiative (JMDI) is a global inter-agency programme funded by the European Union and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. It focuses on the local dimension of migrants’ contribution to development and aims to maximize the potential of migration for local development. To achieve this, the JMDI provides technical and financial support to up-scale existing locally-led migration and development initiatives across 15 projects in eight target countries: Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Morocco, Nepal, Philippines, Senegal and Tunisia.