Serbia

Tacka povratka (Returning Point) is an online diaspora platform established by the Serbian Entrepreneurs and Science Technology Park Belgrade, with support of the Serbia Creates platform. 

The M4SD Programme (2019-2023) aimed to harness the development benefits and reduce the negative effects of migration for host and home communities, migrants, and their family members. A key component of this Programme was to showcase how inclusive policies can be implemented locally and how the results contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

In Serbia,  the national and local governments are working together and across several policy areas including youth, migration, employment and education sectors. The National Employment Strategy, Economic Migration Strategy, National Youth Strategy and National Youth Law all include mobility considerations and aim to provide opportunities for youth at home and abroad.

Aware of the divisive potential of an increasing polarized public discourse on migration, the project will pool lessons from selected awareness-raising campaigns on migration. Such analysis will offer evidence-based grounds to develop innovative prototypes of awareness-raising/edutainment formats in collaboration with communication experts at the national level, including University faculties of semiotics, communication and marketing, schools of journalism/TV/radio and art.

Making migration and mobility positive forces for development
1. Bring together representatives of diaspora communities and governments of countries of origin and destination for round-table debates on sharing best practices and on recognising the role and needs of diaspora communities in development and investment in countries of origin as well as in integration in the host societies.

The PMD programme is financed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and supports key actors in making more effective use of regular migration and diaspora engagement to achieve their development goals. Guided by the Global Compact for Migration (GCM), the program is implemented by GIZ in up to 25 partner countries and focuses on the following three components:

Together with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), UNDP is supporting eleven countries—Bangladesh, Ecuador, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Morocco, Nepal, the Philippines, Serbia, Senegal and Tunisia, to continue to address the plight of migrants and their host communities by supporting national and local governments to mainstream migration into development plans.

Migration is a global phenomenon affecting all countries worldwide and its effective governance needs global partnerships. It is within this context that, since 2011, IOM and UNDP have been implementing a Joint Global Programme on Mainstreaming Migration (MM) into National Development Strategies with funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. 

Through implementation of the project activities, useful practice was identified which contribute to the timely and adequate respond. Through mobile time that included cultural mediator it was indicated that through such a practice it is easier to provide adequate support. Cultural mediators, have provided assistance to vulnerable population through a specialized case management in gender-based violence, safety planning, follow-up of cases, referral, psychosocial support, but they also became engaged in the activities dedicated to the best interests assessment and referral of such cases.

TawiPay (www.tawipay.com) is a pilot money transfer project that started in 2015. Its main goal is to increase transparency in remittance channels. The Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) financed the establishment of the two remittance channels, Switzerland–Serbia and Switzerland–Bosnia. The project’s objective is to enable migrants/diaspora communities to reduce the cost of sending money to their home countries.