Cape Verdean Prime Minister Ulisses Correia e Silva acknowledged this Friday the importance of a program to receive and integrate returned migrants, but said the country should focus on prevention to reduce forced returns.
“Preventive work is the best way to ensure that these situations are minimized, they cannot be eliminated anywhere in the world, they exist, but we must ensure that prevention can reduce forced return situations,” the head of government said.
Ulisses Correia e Silva spoke in the city of Praia at the public presentation of the Program for the Reception and Social (Re)Integration of Returned Migrants (PRAIMIR), created by the executive to respond to a group considered to be in a situation of “great instability and social vulnerability” .
The program emerged after two similar instruments created in previous years, with a “shortage” of resources, as well as in terms of design, implementation, monitoring and interagency coordination.
The prime minister said the government is providing Cape Verde with a “strong national agenda” through the institutional framework, starting with the approval of the resolution by the council of ministers and having “strong leaders”.
As a country of emigration, he said that the problem is related to migration, return, repatriation and deportation, where there are successes but also failures, the latter, which he acknowledged, are the goal of stigmatization and exclusion.
“Sometimes there is a tendency to focus only on failure cases, we have to make a big effort so that success cases, even if they happen episodic, we can work on them, but highlight success cases more, so that the stigma and this sometimes negative assessment can be relativized. There are several cases of good integration, and we must show that they are positively contagious,” he urged.
The resolution that created PRAIMIR notes that in 2017 Cape Verde updated its migration profile, which revealed a statistical increase in deportations from Europe and the United States.
From 2010 to 2015, there were 576 cases, mostly from Portugal, and from 2016 to 2022, 343 cases from the US, Portugal and France, according to the Office of Foreigners and Borders (DEF).
Last May, Cape Verdean Minister for Communities Jorge Santos estimated that 1.5 million Cape Verdeans and their descendants live outside the archipelago, compared to nearly 500,000 Cape Verdeans living in the country.
In an explanatory note, the Government of Cape Verde also recalled that in 2012 the country signed with the European Union (EU) an agreement on the facilitation of short-stay visas, readmission agreements for citizens and citizens of third countries with irregular status.
The agreements, which entered into force at the end of 2014, provide that the country will accept into its territory nationals of its own country, as well as third-country nationals expelled from a European state, in this case, provided that it can be proven that they previous presence in Cape Green.
The Migration Management Program, considered one of the country’s challenges to achieve a balance between economic, security and humanitarian aspects, was established by the Ministry of Family Affairs, Social Inclusion and Social Development, together with several national and international partners.
The document, which entered into force at the end of January, is aimed at citizens deported or repatriated as a result of legal proceedings, national repatriates due to the extremely difficult situation and readmitted immigrants.
As a general goal, I am trying to structure and implement reception, assistance and social (re)integration mechanisms for returned migrants in Cape Verde.
Still intending to develop actions together with families and the community, as well as in municipalities and civil society organizations, the returnee will be disconnected from the program once they are fully and effectively reintegrated into society.
The program will accompany people from the moment they arrive at airports, continuing their identification, reception, assistance and subsequent referral and reintegration.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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