Our work

EVAM’s ambition is to bring about fundamental changes in the way migrants are treated. It seeks to establish partnerships with actors strategically positioned to work on these issues and willing to take concrete action, now.

EVAM is a global initiative interacting at all levels of the decision-making process to establish a dialogue with the perpetrators of violence. This work involves the implementation of various projects and approaches.

EVAM IN ECUADOR

Ecuador is the Latin American country that welcomes the most migrants, mostly from Venezuela and Colombia. However, despite the Government’s efforts, Ecuadorian society is marked by xenophobia, which creates situations of violence and discrimination against migrants.

For instance, in the field of education, the UN Refugee Agency has identified numerous cases of school dropouts among migrant children, whose presumed origins are the lack of resources, lack of documentation but also discrimination against migrants. Less visible and less integrated in the social fabric, migrants are more exposed to abuse because of their growing insecurity in the context of the COVID-19 crisis.

This is why EVAM is present in Ecuador through the opening of an office in Quito. EVAM works in partnership with the Ecuadorian associations belonging to the Red Clamor group (la Misión Scalabriniana, el Servicio Jesuita a Refugiados y la Pastoral Social Cáritas) and with the financial support of the the German International Development Cooperation Agency GIZ. Our project aims to reduce xenophobia and discrimination against migrants in the education and health sectors.

The main objective is to make visible the unintended discriminatory effects of xenophobia in the implementation of public policies and to support institutions to combat this problem. The methodology and expertise that EVAM brings to the project will contribute to the creation of a dialogue with the authorities concerned. It will be founded on the basis of testimonies collected by the associations of Red Clamor in the field. This action plan, implemented over 12 months, has been designed to ensure that migrants have effective access to education and health.

On July 14, 2021, EVAM and the Red Clamor organized a virtual training with Facebook Latin America aimed at providing training to associations of people in human mobility, teenagers and educational staff on how to identify and report content that incites hate and bullying.

Our field partners :

TERRITORY ZERO VIOLENCE AGAINST MIGRANTS

This project is grounding EVAM’s approach at local level, through an in-depth involvement of local authorities from the start, inviting them to work together towards the identification and reduction of harmful situations affecting migrants in specific geographical areas and/or sectors: hospitals, education, transport…

With Territory Zero Violence Against Migrants, EVAM enters into a quality approach with local and institutional actors whose activity impact migrants negatively or who has the ability to shield them from being exposed to violent situations.

By applying the concept developed in 2016 by ATD Fourth World and its experiment “Zero long-term unemployment zones” to situations of violence suffered by migrants, EVAM proposes here to take up a certain number of the premises put forward by this initiative:

the rejection of a form of fatalism with regard to the fate of migrants;
a positive and constructive approach based on the empowerment of the actors and institutions at the origin of these situations of violence;
an down-to-the-ground approach aimed at informing public policies and actors by placing the human being at the heart of the system.

It operates through four methodological principles, five actors and five steps.

PARTNERSHIP WITH THE LEGAL CLINIC Catholic University of Louvain

EVAM works in partnership with the students of the Legal Clinic of the Catholic University of Louvain. Initiated in 2019 by the director of the Clinic and Professor of Law Sylvie Sarolea, this partnership focuses on the writing of research studies whose subjects deal with the theme of violence against migrants. The Clinic has the particularity of working alongside Non-Governmental Organizations whose mandate relates to the themes of academic research work. This allows students to approach their subject with an interesting practical approach.

While the students carry out in-depth research, including in the field, EVAM provides them guidelines for further study thanks to its expertise. The main objective of this partnership is to allow a better understanding of the legal context of migration, particularly regarding the violence perpetrated against migrants. The subjects chosen will focus on the school integration of migrant children, migrants trafficking, the impact of the COVID-19 on asylum in Belgium and finally, access to justice for migrants.

Not only does the production of these studies contribute to the global effort to document situations of violence against migrants, but it also gives EVAM the opportunity to explore new fields of action in order to expand the initiative. Indeed, these studies will serve to pass the first step of the EVAM methodology that aims to identify harmful situations affecting migrants.