Orientation centers and support spaces to be strengthened with the Presidency of Brazil
As a champion country, Brazil led the Guidance Centers thematic workshop, which seeks to ad-vance exchanging good practices to strengthen care systems.
A two-hour session, with simultaneous interpretation into English, attracted 168 attendees con-nected from 13 countries in the region to exchange good practices on the orientation and tempo-rary reception centers for Venezuelan migrant and refugee individuals and families, as well as to strengthen the care, coordination, and networking systems between the different support spaces.
With the leadership of Brazil, supported by the IOM and UNHCR agencies, the thematic work-shop started to strengthen coordination between the Member States of the Quito Process and humanitarian actors working in response to the situation in Venezuela. Its objective was to im-prove the care and reception of refugees and migrants in Orientation Centers, Temporary Recep-tion, and Support Spaces.
The workshop began by validating the guiding principles and standards of the Centers and their implementation in the region. The purpose was to work together with various actors and strengthen the comprehensive response and disseminate these principles and standards, as well as present the progress in feeding the regional mapping tool of the R4V Platform services, including Support Spaces and the services offered in each locality (such as health, nutrition, education, protection, transportation, connectivity, livelihoods or food).
The regional service mapping tool of the R4V Regional Platform is available at: https://espacios.r4v.info/es/map
Then came the exchange of successful experiences and good practices in people care, as well as the approach to the reception of refugees and migrants, and the way in which the various ac-tors are articulated when it comes to strengthening response and care mechanisms.
In the end, the conclusions that were generated from the workshop pointed to:
- Strengthen a network of services that reinforce the defense of the human rights of the partici-pants in each center and support space.
- Increase the support of the IOM and UNHCR country offices in this initiative, as can be seen from the mapping carried out and the request of the States.
- Carry out seminars and exchanges between institutions involved in the network of support spaces as a point of future action.
- Highlight the importance of offering a diversity of services in the face of new demands based on the needs of refugees and migrants.
- Highlight the participation of civil society, define clear lines of communication for international cooperation, and increase work with host populations.
Learn more about Guidance centers.