The rights and well-be­ing of mi­grants are ex­pect­ed to in­ten­si­fy lo­cal­ly with the launch of the Unit­ed Na­tions Net­work on Mi­gra­tion, Trinidad and To­ba­go (UN­NM-TT).

At yes­ter­day’s launch at The Brix, Au­to­graph Col­lec­tion, Port-of-Spain, var­i­ous Unit­ed Na­tions’ mis­sions in­clud­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion, gath­ered in sup­port of UN­NM-TT’s es­tab­lish­ment and part­ner­ship with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“As we are all aware, Trinidad and To­ba­go has been tra­di­tion­al­ly iden­ti­fied as a coun­try of which mi­grants ei­ther orig­i­nate from tran­sit-through or see it as a des­ti­na­tion…and there are chal­lenges yes and it can be ad­dressed and op­por­tu­ni­ties to be har­nessed,” said IMO POS project of­fi­cer, Zeke Be­har­ry.

Ac­cord­ing to Be­har­ry, the Glob­al Com­pact for Mi­gra­tion will con­tin­ue to act as the frame­work on mi­gra­tion that Trinidad and To­ba­go and oth­er mem­ber states have agreed to, pre­vent­ing each State from ad­dress­ing mi­gra­tion mat­ters alone.

With the launch of UNM-TT, it is be­lieved that the coun­try will be able to deal with mat­ters of mi­gra­tion in a more ef­fec­tive and time­ly man­ner, along with es­tab­lish­ing bet­ter col­lab­o­ra­tive sup­port be­tween UN na­tions.

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Dr Amery Browne spoke at the launch and ex­plained that while the sig­nif­i­cant lo­cal mi­gra­tion rate has re­sult­ed in their be­ing ‘a beau­ti­ful eclec­tic mix of cul­tures,’ col­lab­o­ra­tion is need­ed to en­sure the safe­ty of mi­grant groups.

“Fa­cil­i­ta­tion of the move­ment of peo­ple is an im­per­a­tive for Trinidad and To­ba­go and for our re­gion. Of course, un­reg­u­lat­ed flows are of­ten im­prac­ti­cal and have neg­a­tive so­cial, eco­nom­ic and se­cu­ri­ty im­pacts. In this re­gard, as we seek to en­gage with part­ners to en­sure that the del­i­cate and prob­lem­at­ic bal­ance be­tween man­ag­ing the well-be­ing of mi­grants, and the per­haps, un­avoid­able do­mes­tic con­cerns as a des­ti­na­tion coun­try is prop­er­ly de­vel­oped and main­tained,” Browne said.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of a US$2.6m Mi­gra­tion Mul­ti-Part­ner Trust Fund which Be­har­ry stat­ed has been award­ed to IOM and oth­er lo­cal UN agen­cies and cur­rent­ly re­mains un­der the con­sid­er­a­tion of the Cab­i­net. But Browne gave as­sur­ance that mi­gra­tion mat­ters re­main a pri­or­i­ty for the Gov­ern­ment.

“I al­so reaf­firm the com­mit­ment of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to very pro­duc­tive col­lab­o­ra­tions with the IOM of­fice in Port-of-Spain, which will re­dound to the ben­e­fit of all per­sons that are touched by mi­gra­tion and our so­ci­ety as a whole,” Browne said.

Over the years sev­er­al mi­grants have made their way to Trinidad and To­ba­go. Most re­cent­ly Venezue­lan mi­grants have been com­ing to seek a bet­ter life af­ter con­cerns rose about the eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty in their home­land.

In 2019, the Gov­ern­ment em­barked on a reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise fol­low­ing the in­flux of Venezue­lan mi­grants which al­lowed them to work legal­ly. That saw over 16,000 Venezue­lans reg­is­ter­ing.

Aside from Venezue­lans, there are oth­er asy­lum seek­ers and mi­grants who al­so seek a bet­ter life in Trinidad and To­ba­go.