IOM

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION for MIGRATION

The IOM, or International Organization for Migration was created in 1951 and its main objective is to promote international cooperation regarding migration, its purpose is to help solve and find solutions regarding migration that is ocurring all over the world right now and give assistance to migrants and refugees who need it. It consists of 127 member states.

An important factor to keep in mind is that half of migrants today are now women, and even though before they were simply the regular housewife following her husband, nowadays this concept has changed and the number of women migrating independently for a better life on their own are increasing every day more and more. As a result of this, there are a lot of ways this organization works to protect migrant womens rights.

• - Promotes legal and safe migration for women: IOM provides women with clear and better information regarding migration, and provides safe channels for them in order to avoid illegal migration. It has a weekly training session where women can have direct contact with this information.

• - Promotes policies that regulate the recruitment and deployment of women migrant workers: It helps protect women from false, discriminatory employment contracts.

• -Protection of womens rights: Helps protect women from discrimination and abusive labour practices. OIM also provides direct health assistance to the migrant women. To those women who have already been victims of any type of abuse, the OIM also provides them with shelter, legal and medical counseling.

• Institutions: OIM works to creat projects, mechanisms, and programs to help improve migrant needs.

http://www.gemmaproject.eu/publicdocs/prevent_violence_against_wmw_2009.pdf

<http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/about-iom/lang/es