Impact of COVID-19 on households with migrants in La Unión, El Salvador
Georgiana Braga-Orillard, Resident Representative, UNDP El Salvador, georgiana.braga@undp.org
Laura Rivera Marinero, Governance Team Leader, UNDP El Salvador, laura.rivera@undp.org
Jorge Peraza Breedy, IOM Chief of Mission for El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, jperaza@iom.int
Salvador Gutiérrez, IOM Deputy Chief of Mission for El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, sgutierrez@iom.int
Related Sustainable Development Goals and Global Compact for Migration Objectives
Summary
Local authorities in La Unión, El Salvador worked with IOM and UNDP to develop a local COVID-19 Socio-economic Response Plan to ensure that the entire community, including migrants, recover from the pandemic in synergy with the national and international COVID-19 Response Plans. The plan was developed based on findings from a study on the effects of COVID-19 on migrants and the community in La Unión, including immigrants, returnees, and families with migrants who remained abroad.
This project is part of the IOM-UNDP seed funding initiative to fast-track joint response to the socio-economic impact of COVID-19.
Key objective
The objective of the initiative was to work together with local authorities and migrants in La Unión to identify the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on households with migrant families and to address these effects through a local Socio-economic Response Plan focused on migrants in the context of the pandemic.
Main activities
The initiative consisted of a) a study and a joint analysis to b) formulate a Socio-economic Response Plan.
Key successes or innovative factors, good practices and lessons learned (if available)
The initiative highlighted two important lessons. First, systematic and robust data systems that include migrants are needed from the outset, to enable rapid response to emergencies or shocks like COVID-19 and support sustainable recovery. Second, the absence of migration-specific policies are bottlenecks not only for the success of COVID-19 policies but also sustainable development in general. Based on these learnings, the following opportunities for future action were identified to support La Union and El Salvador to recover better from COVID-19 and leverage migration for local and national development.
Beneficiaries
Returning migrants, local communities, local authorities
