by Veronica DeVore, swissinfo.ch
June 6, 2014 – 11:00
Thousands of asylum seekers have come to Switzerland from Nigeria in the past decade, often with all their family’s hopes on their shoulders. When they arrive, they’re offered $7000 to turn around, go back home and start a business. But what’s behind that generous-sounding deal?
“Most of them, when they return [home], they think they’ve failed. Because they’re not the big businessman who returns successfully with a lot of money,” says Katharina Schnöring of the International Organization for Migration, which works with Switzerland to implement asylum seeker return programmes – known as “assisted voluntary return and reintegration”, or AVRR.
The voluntary return option for Nigeria gives anyone who chooses that route a maximum payment of $1000 cash on leaving Switzerland and another $6000 in-kind to start a business or improve their situation. The idea behind the programme is to give returning Nigerians other options besides being forced to go home on a flight under guard – so-called “forced repatriation”.
“It’s about returning with dignity, that at least you come back with something and you are able to build up a better life,” Schnöring says. According to the Federal Office for Migration, 90% of Nigerian citizens who had to return to their home country in 2012 do so independently. And in 2013, a total of 544 Nigerian asylum seekers opted to go home under the voluntary return programme.
The AVRR programme to Nigeria has resulted in returned asylum seekers starting small projects like barber and cosmetics shops, or stores selling spare parts and electronics. Many – but not all – become profitable enterprises. The challenges of daily life in Nigeria, from political instability to high cost of living and having to pay rent several years in advance, make getting a business off the ground especially challenging and mean the funds are usually stretched to the max.
Migration partnership: Switzerland and Nigeria
Formed in 2011, the broad migration partnership between the Swiss and Nigerian governments is made up of many key elements, including:
A project enabling Nigerian expatriates in Switzerland to teach young people in Nigeria
A pilot project on police cooperation where several Nigerian police visited Switzerland to enhance operational co-operation with selected cantonal authorities in the fight against drug trafficking.
Capacity-building of the Nigerian immigration authorities and support for Nigeria in the implementation of a protection policy for internally displaced persons
A working group to examine the issue of irregular migration
A joint action plan on asylum and return including the assisted voluntary return programme. Nigerian asylum seekers’ cases are also processed under a new “fast track” system.
But both Schnöring and Karl Lorenz, the head of the section for third countries and countries of origin at the migration office,
Violence, instability and high prices make Nigeria a difficult place to do business, but voluntary return programmes aim to give returned asylum seekers the means to get their projects off the ground (Reuters)
What sets Switzerland’s work with Nigeria apart is the countries’ broader migration partnership, of which the return programme is a small part. That partnership has high-level officials from both the Nigerian and Swiss governments meeting on a regular basis to tackle a host of issues vital to both countries.
“I think what is unique is the holistic governmental approach Switzerland takes [with Nigeria], that they meet, that they talk, that the [AVRR] programme is embedded into the whole approach of the Swiss migration partnership and isn’t something standing alone,” Schnöring says.
“That approach is something we always give as a best practice when we talk to other European countries.”
The need for such a collaborative approach emerged when Swiss-Nigerian relations were strained after a Nigerian asylum seeker died at Zurich airport shortly before boarding a repatriation flight in 2010. A key step in repairing relations was gaining Nigeria’s acceptance of sending asylum seekers back home.
“The acceptance by the Nigerian government of our return policy has improved,” Lorenz tells swissinfo.ch. “They understand that we consistently promote voluntary return, which makes it easier for them to accept forced returns because they understand that there is a serious and credible option. There’s a choice. People can make that choice.”
read more here and watch video:
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/A_fresh_start_in_Nigeria,_brought_to_you_by_Switzerland.html?cid=38687662