Main area: Migration
Theme: Activities involving return and reintegration programmes
Assessment: ODA-eligible
Provider country: Spain
Recipient country: El Salvador
Implementing agency: Technical Secretary for External Financing of Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SETEFE-MIREX)
Budget (EUR million): 0.3
Year(s): 2018-2022
Purpose code: N/A
Case number: Migration / 13
Contribution to returned migrant women and children’s reintegration, as prioritized population in El Salvador’s Social Plan
The government of El Salvador faces the enormous challenge of managing programmes that facilitate the integration into social life and the productive and economic reintegration of people who are deported or involuntarily returned. In 2014, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through its Vice-Ministry for Salvadorans Abroad (VMSALEX), launched the "Pilot Project for Comprehensive Attention to Returnees" in order to provide care to people who return to the country involuntarily. For this purpose, "orientation windows" were installed in the offices of the departmental governments of San Salvador, Usulután, San Miguel, La Unión, Santa Ana and La Libertad.
The success of the pilot project led, in 2016, to the design and implementation of the "El Salvador es Tu Casa" programme. This is an inter-institutional programme that includes information, orientation and linkage services with social, labour, productive and educational programmes offered by different state institutions. Although the results of "El Salvador es tu casa" are very positive after 2 years of operation, a deficient gender approach has been identified in its conception and, consequently, the lack of specialized services that respond to the specific needs and interests of the most vulnerable sector of the population returning to El Salvador: women and children.
The Project is intended to improve reintegration support by means of expanding the offer of reintegration programmes for women returnees and their children, whether they are in the process of returning or not, avoiding irregular migration flows, with a focus on improving information management and upgrading technological capacities. Specific objectives:
Incorporate the single registry of participants (RUP) to the computerized system of attention and follow-up of returnees.
Strengthen the Returned Persons Attention Windows with technical and institutional capacity.
Facilitate the access of returned migrant women to productive enterprises and children to education and recreation.
The characteristics and insertion itinerary of the most vulnerable group of returnees (women and children) are known.
Women and children returnees, as a particularly disadvantaged group, are aware of and can access a special attention mechanism adapted to their needs and interests.
The range of development programmes aimed at women and children returnees has been expanded.
This activity is deemed ODA-eligible. The project supports sustainable reintegration of returnees in their country of origin (El Salvador) with a focus on expanding the programmatic offer for sustainable reintegration programmes of vulnerable groups. Criterion 6 specifies that reintegration activities are in principle ODA-eligible irrespective of the status of returnees (voluntary or forced, as is the case in this project where returnees are involuntarily returned or deported). Moreover, Spanish support does not exclusively target returnees from Spain, which would require specific additional justification.
This work was approved and declassified by the Development Assistance Committee’s Working Party on Development Finance Statistics.
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