IOM Director General Amy Pope will make her first trip to Kenya.
Amy Pope, 49, upset the incumbent António Vitorino in the first round with 98 to 67 votes, becoming the first woman to lead the international organization.
Amy Pope, the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) newly-elected director general, will make her first trip to Kenya next week.
Beginning on October 12, Pope, who officially took office on Sunday when António Vitorino’s mandate expired, will be in the nation for three days.
Pope will see President William Ruto and other top government officials during the visit, according to a release from the IOM office.
The announcement states that at their talks, “they will discuss ways to improve IOM’s collaboration in promoting safe, regular, and dignified migration, and addressing migration challenges in Kenya, including climate change migration.”
For almost 40 years, IOM Kenya has collaborated with the government to manage migration-related challenges.
Programs on migration governance, labor mobility and social inclusion, migrant safety and support, migration, the environment and climate change, and readiness, response, and stabilization for emergencies are all offered by the organization.
Resettlement and mobility management, migration health, and immigration and border management are further areas.
According to UN statistics, Kenya is home to around 490,000 refugees and asylum seekers in addition to an estimated 1.1 million migrants.
Kenya attracts migrants seeking greater economic success, improved health care, and higher educational attainment.
Additionally, the nation serves as a source, destination, and transit point for people migrating from the Middle East, North Africa, North America, and Europe.
In addition, Kenya is home to two of Africa’s oldest refugee camps, Kakuma and Dadaab.
Over 465,000 people have been forcibly moved throughout the nation as a result of climate-related mobility.
On May 15, Pope, a former deputy director of the organization, was chosen to succeed Vitorino, who has held the position since 2018.
She leads the body as the first female to do so.
She worked from 2015 to 2017 as a deputy assistant to the president, a deputy homeland security advisor, and President Joe Biden’s senior counselor on migration before being appointed to the body.
From 2013 to 2015, she also worked as the President’s special assistant and senior director for trans-border security.
Nearly 19,000 employees of IOM, which has locations in 171 nations worldwide, aim to promote “humane and orderly” migration.
To support more than one million migrants from the Horn of Africa, IOM needs a total of Sh10 billion ($84 million).
According to the report, more than 250,000 migrants, including young people, women, and children, leave the Horn of Africa for the Gulf states each year in quest of better employment possibilities.
