Return and Reintegration

In 2014, Indonesia issued the so-called ´Village Law´ which intends to push for development in villages and empower villagers in conducting business and economic activities. The law was one of the most significant pieces of legislation since Indonesia began a push for decentralization of power from the center to the regions in 2001.  The law guarantees that the central government allocate a specific amount of funds to Indonesia’s 74,093 villages so that they can finance their own development based on their individual needs and priorities

The Government of the Philippines created a communication platform BaLinkBayan for Filipino returnees, which functions as a one-stop online portal for diaspora engagement. BaLinkBayan is a means to connect Filipino individuals and communities to the Philippines through the Diaspora to Development (D2D) program of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) BaLinkBayan focuses on the five of the D2D: diaspora investment and entrepreneurship, diaspora philanthropy, brain gain program, educational exchange, and medical mission coordination. 

Loan Programme for Returned Nepalese Migrants provides loans of 1 million Nepalese rupees ($8,908) to people who had returned to Nepal in the three years preceeding the beginning of the programme (November, 2018). The loans are meant to be used to build businesses and should be repaid within five years.

The Migrant Support Fund is a federal fund administered to states according to the size of their repatriated migrant populations, which provides migrants one-time seed grants of up to USD 1,500 to start a new business.

Because the Mexican labor market is saturated and often unfamiliar to returning migrants, especially those who have been abroad for an extended period, these entrepreneurial and self-employment opportunities offer a key path to their economic reintegration.

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.

In May 2017, the Government of Guatemala established the National Strategy for Labor Reintegration for Returned Guatemalan Migrants (Estrategia Nacional para la Reinsercion de los Migrantes Guatemaltecos Retornados) to collect returnees' sociodemographic and skill profiles, and to establis institutions and processes for facilitating skill certification. 

Afghanistan is second only to Syria in the number of refugees originating from within its borders in recent years. Officially, about 2.5 million refugees have left Afghanistan in the almost four decades of this country being marked by hostilities and terror. The unofficial figure for the number of people who have fled exceeds six million. The majority of them are currently in the neighbouring countries of Pakistan and Iran as well as in Turkey. It is in this context that the first information centre for potential migrants was opened in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

In Morocco, national consultations were held in September 2017 with civil society and diaspora representivatives, scholars and researchers, represensatives of the private sector and public institutions. These national consultations have enabled Morocco to come with a consolidated contribution to the Global Compact, the "Recommendations of the Kingdom of Morocco on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration."

The Somos Mexicanos ('We are Mexicans') program provides support to members of the Mexican diaspora who choose or are forced to return to Mexico. An initiative of the Mexican Ministry of the Interior beginning in 2014, the program includes support on food and health, identity, communication to families, transfer and shelter. It also seeks to maximize the productive reintegration of returnees, providing guidance on job opportunities, access to socail programs, and options to continue studies.