Human Mobility Associate Officer

IOM is committed to the principle that humane and orderly migration benefits migrants and society. As an intergovernmental organization, IOM acts with its partners in the international community to assist in meeting the operational challenges of migration; advance understanding of migration issues; encourage social and economic development through migration; and uphold the human dignity and well-being of migrants.

While emigration to some extent reduces unemployment and enhances livelihoods through remittances, it also contributes to labor and skills shortages in the country of origin, affecting competitiveness, growth, and economic convergence, along with other negative effects such as the sustainability of the pension system. In Serbia, several sectors are already facing a shortage of workforce, partly due to the high rates of emigration. Evidence is scarce, but it does indicate that labor emigration is at an all-time high and has been increasing every year.

The Serbian government have different degrees of awareness of labor migration challenges and limited experience in facilitating pathways for regular migration and labor migration policies. In addition, the administrative processes for engaging migrant workers are lengthy and costly, making it difficult for smaller companies to recruit outside of the country, thus negatively impacting their growth potential. While new policies and procedures for expanding and enhancing regular migration pathways have been put in place in recent years, important challenges remain to harness the potential of labor migration and address the growing needs of employers while ensuring institutional safeguards for protection of labor migrants rights and prevention of exploitation. In this context, targeted and evidence-based programming is needed on labor migration policy and programmes to support establishing the necessary institutional capacities, services and safeguards, and thus help advance the labor migration agenda. Comprehensive problem analysis and consultations with institutional, public and private stakeholders, as well as technical knowledge of laws, procedures, administrative rules and practices across the country will be required in this process.

The selected UN Volunteer will support IOM’s strategic objectives regarding mobility and labor migration in Serbia, notably through support and participation in analysis of labor migration policy and programming, expert discussions among IOM and partners, stakeholder engagement, project development, event management.

Under the direct supervision of Program Coordinator, Human Mobility and Migration Governance in IOM Serbia, the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:
- Support IOM Serbia Management Team for programming in facilitating regular migration pathways and labor migration in Serbia, in the framework of IOM Strategic Plan 2024-2028, Skopje Declaration and related Action Plan, and Global Compact for Migration (GCM).
- Support in data collection on trends, policies, standards, and practices in international labor migration of relevance to the Serbian Government efforts to develop labor migration strategies.
- Participate in the work of IOM Serbia in assessing the current labor migration needs and potentials for the country and in defining possible approaches to managing such forms of migration with effective protection safeguards and enhancing opportunities for fair and ethical recruitment with guarantees for decent working conditions.
- Support the implementation of labor migration related activities (ex. consultations, roundtables, visibility events, donor presentations);
- Participate in the development of position papers, concept notes, project proposals and budget for the implementation of labor migration programmes or activities
- Support IOM Serbia Management Team in organizing public events/conferences/media campaigns covering the topics relevant to regular migration pathways and labor migration