On 17-18 February 2022, IOM Azerbaijan jointly with the State Migration Service (SMS) organized a two-day regional hybrid course on “International Migration Law” (IML) for the civil servants of migration agencies and other state bodies of 10 regional countries, including Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan.

The event was organized in the framework Migration Week 2022 dedicated to the first International Migration Review Forum (IMRF).

The training was opened with welcome by Mr Vladimir Gjorgjiev, Chief of Mission for IOM Azerbaijan and Mr Vusal Huseynov, Chief of the State Migration Service.

In his opening remarks, Mr Gjorgjiev highlighted the importance of IMRF in upholding the sensitive agenda on migration in 2022. He also cemented his point that it is essential to provide an opportunity to migration civil servants from region countries to take part in lectures and discussions on IML provided by leading experts to advance the quality-of-service delivery of state migrant agencies in the region and beyond.

Chief of the State Migration Service (SMS) Vusal Huseynov greeted the participants and wished them success and talked about the role of Azerbaijan in implementation of Global Compact for Safe Orderly and Regular Migration(GCM) in the capacity GCM Champion country and its efforts in upholding the migrants rights as an inclusive part of Azerbaijan community.

The experts of UN Network on Migration (UNNM) Secretariat has joined the introduction and briefed the participants about the roadmap to IMRF and review of GCM as an international document which defines 23 objectives and 10 guiding principles to achieve safe, orderly and regular migration processes.

The experts from IOM, academic institutions from region countries and Azerbaijan delivered training sessions covering the subjects, such as History of International Migration Law (IML), General framework of IML, its main instruments and principles, the rights and obligations of migrants and States at borders, Introduction to displacement and human trafficking, Labour migration, and the rights of migrant workers, the Rights of Children, Women and Stateless persons in the Context of Migration and etc.

At the end of the training, certificates to participants were distributed by Mr Vladimir Gjorgjiev, the Chief of IOM Mission. He stressed that this training will also contribute to realization of  IOM and SMS joint project which aims to enhance regional training capacities and cooperation on migration management in Azerbaijan, CIS countries, and beyond via the Regional Training Centre on Migration that will serve as a hub for knowledge sharing, research, and policy dialogue with governments and a broad range of stakeholders in the field of migration in the region.

Representatives of the government stakeholders, migration agencies of Moldova, Belarus, Turkey, Ukraine, Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Iran, Turkmenistan, civil society, academia from Russia and the target region and Azerbaijan came together in two-day hybrid workshop to discuss the results of comparative work.