Promoting Employment and Social Protection under the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework in Central America and Mexico

The overall objective of the Project is to reduce economic inequality of forcibly displaced persons and their host communities. With a view to improve the access to decent (self-)employment and social protection arrangements of displaced persons and their host communities, the Project will focus on two main results: 1) improving access of forcibly displaced persons and their host communities to public and private (self-)employment-related services, such as job matching, technical and vocational education and training, financial services, skill recognition, and advice; and 2) improving access to social protection arrangements, notably related to employment, basic income and protection against existential life-cycle risks such as accidents or ill-health. The Project will focus its activities on the two main host countries participating in the MIRPS, Costa Rica and Mexico, as well as Honduras as an important country of origin and of internal displacement. Activities will also include fostering regional exchange of good practices with all participating countries. Guatemala and El Salvador will be included in the regional exchange activities. For Costa Rica and Mexico, the Project has chosen refugees and asylum seekers as direct beneficiaries. For Honduras, beneficiaries include returnees with protection needs and internally displaced people or at risk of displacement due to violence – giving priority to women, youth 18-24 years old, and informal traders (in particular, market and street vendors) because of their vulnerable conditions facing violence, poverty, and social and labour exclusion. The Project’s main strategy is to strengthen institutional capacities for improving, adopting and/or creating the necessary policies, programs and services so that beneficiaries have access to employment, self-employment and social protection in a sustainable way. For this reason, most activities will be implemented with duty bearers (recipients) who will be responsible for public and private support services, such as employment agencies, vocational training centres, social security, immigration agencies, financial services, entrepreneurship and enterprise development, among other. The Project will also develop activities with employers' organizations, trade unions, private companies, NGOs, civil society organisations, journalists and public opinion makers, which will be instrumental in the awareness-raising, information sharing, communication, training and mobilisation processes regarding these populations’ rights, integration and social cohesion issues.

Project symbol

RLA/18/05/EUR

Admin unit

CO-Mexico

Start date

01/01/2020

End date

30/06/2023

Total allocation

2936137

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

2940320

Development Partners

European Commission, DG for International Cooperation, Development Cooperation Instrument

Country/Countries

Costa Rica
Central America
Mexico

Outcomes

Outcome 6: Protection at work for all