On 17-20 May IOM Georgia hosted monitoring mission from Belgium – representatives of the donor Federal Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (FEDASIL) and IOM. The delegation visited return and reintegration project beneficiaries as well as counterparts in Tbilisi and West Georgia.

Issues of future cooperation and lessons learned were discussed with the focus on Job Counseling and Placement of returned migrants.

IOM Belgium and IOM Georgia offices have been cooperating on return and reintegration projects since 2007. In the frame of the Belgian AVRR programme, IOM Belgium has regularly conducted monitoring missions.

The aim of such missions is assessing how the reintegration assistance is beneficial and to which extent it is important in supporting the returnees to reinsert in their community. Another purpose is to identify gaps, if any and ways of program enhancement.

Thanks to monitoring missions, Belgian AVRR counsellors obtain a concrete view on the impact of the reintegration support and gain insight into the Georgian context to be better able to counsel future potential returnees.