Launched in March 2017 with funding from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Development and Cooperation (DG DEVCO). The Pilot Action is developed in the context of EU-IOM External Actions with an aim to contribute to the development of voluntary return and sustainable community-based reintegration approaches in South Africa as a host country and Malawi and Mozambique as countries of origin.

The specific objectives of the Pilot Action are:

1. To support targeted countries of origin, transit and destination to enhance national structures and capacities to facilitate a dignified and sustainable return and reintegration process; 
2. To support national authorities of targeted countries in the provision of dignified voluntary return assistance to stranded and vulnerable migrants; 
3. To support targeted countries to enhance the sustainability of returnees’ economic, social and psychosocial reintegration through tailored individual and community-level assistance.

Beyond activities in Southern Africa, the project includes a global component – the EU-IOM Knowledge Management Hub (KMH) that was established in late 2017.

The KMH’s aim is to strengthen learning across return and reintegration programmes, and support the harmonization of approaches, processes and tools under the EU–IOM Actions in support of migrant protection and reintegration.

The KMH’s activities revolve around four inter-connected components:

• Ensuring Coherent Voluntary Return and Reintegration Approaches: Standardization of approaches and practices, including through capacity building, to ensure coherence among programmes and adherence to IOM global guidelines, as well as to avoid fragmentation of approaches and practices and improve opportunities for collaboration.
• Harmonising Monitoring and Evaluation Activities: Support of the harmonization of cross-regional monitoring and evaluation activities among the EU-IOM Actions to ensure availability of reliable data allowing for comparative analysis across regions, particularly in the field of reintegration sustainability, feeding into evidence-based programming.
• Setting up Knowledge Management Tools: Set-up of knowledge management tools such as webinars, cross-regional knowledge sharing workshops, and a multi-faceted Return and Reintegration Platform with a variety of tools to view, share, learn, and discuss research and best practices, including the community of practice and repository of resources.
• Producing Knowledge Products: Generation of knowledge products to address knowledge gaps and enhance evidence-based programming. These include: Research Fund allowing to commission studies addressing understudied topics as well as other publications sharing findings from the reintegration data analysis, taking stock of the state of the art in various areas related to reintegration assistance and proposing leads for future programmes, and sharing reintegration initiatives that can be replicated or adapted elsewhere.

The project activities in Southern Africa were phased out in 2020 and as of January 2021, the project’s focus is on the global KMH component.