Promoting Safe Migration in 2022: West and Central Africa

The third edition of IOM’s Promoting Safe Migration publication showcases lessons and achievements from awareness raising under the Cooperation on Migration and Partnerships to Achieve Sustainable Solutions (COMPASS) initiative and related interventions, such as Migrants as Messengers and IOM X. The work of the Media, Communications and Awareness Raising Unit in Dakar has shown that awareness raising activities that seek to support informed decisions about migration and local opportunities work best when they take into account the fact that an individual’s migration decisions are affected by family pressures, community dynamics and broader factors. 

This edition covers COMPASS’s socio-ecological approach to community-based interventions and lessons from five years of Migrants as Messengers, a campaign in which returned migrants share their migration experiences. Highlights include how mural art helped promote a migrant helpline in Libya, how national partnerships helped expand the reach and impact of a counter-trafficking campaign in Egypt, and how safe spaces for dialogue helped tackle tough topics through Community Conversation in Ethiopia. In addition, creative online learning modules from COMPASS’ C4D Academy were added to IOM's free online learning platform, YENNA, to support capacity development in effective communication and Human Centred Design (HCD).