Awareness Raising Campaigns on the Risks of Irregular Migration for the Western Balkan’s 4 – WBAware

ended

The action will pilot an innovative approach to raise the awareness on the risks of irregular migration targeting migrants in the transit Western Balkan (WB) countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina - BiH, Montenegro - MNE, North Macedonia - MKD, and Serbia - SER) en route to the European Union (EU) promoting safe, orderly and informed migration decision making. The immediate risks migrants in transit face are violence, exploitation, exclusion from civil society, and unsafe transit and living conditions – with multi-faceted and intersectional risks for different ethnic, gender, and age groups. The approach proposes the use of online advertisement targeting tools to ‘redirect’ migrant users of YouTube to curated online playlists of original content of migrant testimonies and factual information on the risks of irregular migration. The campaign will be informed by research on migrant decision-making processes, key actors and other factors at play in migration decision making and sources of information and platforms commonly used by migrants to access information and to stay in touch with family and friends in origin and destination countries. The action will target migrants of the top countries of origin transiting irregularly through the WB: primarily Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco, Algeria, Iraq and Bangladesh and in case of emerging trends also from other countries (eg. Tunisia or India). The action will seek to capture synergies with efforts of IOM in these countries, in particular regarding the collection of testimonies of returnees that can be included in the campaign. The project seeks to improve the capacity of local WB and EU partners to engage in such campaigns in the future. Specifically, the German Ministry of Interior and its affiliated authority the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (DE-MoI) and Austrian Ministry of Interior (AT-MoI) (“EU partners” in further text) will be members the advisory board, actively participating in the strategic decision-making on the information campaign’s key messages and creative direction, while local WB civil society actors will be trained to implement the campaign method.