Ukrainian seasonal migrant worker picking raspberries in south Portugal within the framework of an IOM project (2009)

IOM’s overall goal with regard to migration and development is to harness the development potential of international migration for individual migrants and Ukraine. The focus of IOM activities, lies in the strengthening of the positive aspects of migration and in migration management, through economic development, reintegration assistance, and microfinance programming.  

IOM implements activities to realize the full potential of individual migrants and mobile populations through education, training, skills acquisition, empowerment of women (and victims of trafficking) and the protection of migrant’s rights, thus enabling individual migrants to be agents of development.

IOM conducts research on remittances, demographics and investment; facilitates labour migration programmes, to benefit individual livelihood building; fosters economic integration of migrants through specialized micro-credit schemes for small enterprise businesses, which increases the migrants’ potential to contribute to the development of Ukraine; and enhances social cohesion of Ukrainian grass-roots communities by assisting local institutions.

IOM works actively to mitigate migration pressures through economic empowerment, entrepreneurial support and microfinance assistance to vulnerable groups. IOM’s key achievements include seminal labour migration and remittances surveys, successful integration of mobile populations through education and business start-ups, and improved communication links between labour migrants and their families left-behind in Ukraine.