BAKU, Azerbaijan, January 24
By Amina Nazarli - Trend:
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has set the priorities for cooperation with Turkmenistan in its Annual Work Plan for 2022, which will focus on at least four major areas.
Azat Atajanov, IOM Head of Office told Trend that one of the IOM’s initiatives will cover work with the government on implementation of the National Action Plan on Counter-trafficking for 2020-2022.
“Turkmenistan and IOM are cooperating in the area of combatting trafficking in persons for more than 10 years. This is a second National Action Plan on Countertrafficking that IOM is leading on. The focus of the NAP is launching a national referral mechanism for the victims of trafficking, focusing on legislation and institutional mechanisms,” he said.
Migration statistics are among the areas of collaboration between the IOM and Turkmenistan this year.
“IOM is assisting the government of Turkmenistan and particular State Migration Service in learning modern methodologies of collecting and analyzing migration statistics, as well as using it for the national development plans and reporting under Sustainable Development Goals,” he stated.
Implementation of the Advance Passenger Information (API) system in Turkmenistan is another area where IOM cooperates with the government of Turkmenistan, according to the IOM head of office, who added that the country is interested in the implementation of the API and will pursue this goal in the next few years to come.
Atajanov went on to say that the implementation of the Global Compact on Migration is one of the priority areas of cooperation between Turkmenistan and IOM for the last 3 years.
“Turkmenistan was amongst the countries who supported the adoption of the Compact in 2018. In 2020 Turkmenistan established a National Working Group to Implement GCM. IOM works closely with the Working Group on implementation of the GCM focusing on 23 GCM principles, synergies between GCM and SDGs and national priorities in the area of migration,” he said.
In his words, besides those areas, IOM and the government of Turkmenistan consult regularly on new areas of cooperation that involve such important topics as migration and health, migration and emergencies, the situation in the CA region, the situation in Afghanistan, and other topics that affect or may affect the migration, migrants and their families.