DEMAC is thrilled to announce its new partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for the year 2023. The partnership aims to enhance diaspora organizations' operations and coordination in humanitarian assistance, with financial support from USAID - Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (USAID - BHA).

The renewed funding from USAID for 2023 will enable DEMAC and IOM to continue their engagement with diaspora organizations involved in humanitarian response. The project will focus on emergency-prone countries and increasingly support diasporas' operational response, starting with Somalia, which has been severely affected by droughts in the past years. Through the operational response, DEMAC will contribute to the application of IOM’s Framework for Diaspora Engagement in Humanitarian Assistance.

DEMAC, hosted by the Danish Refugee Council, has been working since 2015 to strengthen coordination in humanitarian response by facilitating dialogue and exchange between diaspora organizations and institutional humanitarian actors. Entering this partnership with IOM and collaborating on IOM’s Framework, DEMAC is poised to make even more significant strides towards achieving its goal of enhancing diaspora operations and coordination in humanitarian assistance.

Speaking on the partnership, DEMAC Coordinator, Béatrice Mauconduit, states: "We are pleased to partner with IOM to further enhance coordination and collaboration among diaspora organizations and institutional humanitarian actors. This funding will enable us to provide more support in operational emergency response and research diasporas' engagement in climate change. We are excited to continue our work towards increasing the visibility of diasporas' engagement in humanitarian assistance."

In close partnership, IOM and DEMAC seek to achieve three main outcomes:

1. Enhancing the understanding and acknowledgement by humanitarian stakeholders of diaspora-specific humanitarian interventions.
2. Strengthening humanitarian coordination between diaspora organizations and institutional humanitarian actors.
3. Improving the operational response of humanitarian diaspora organizations, with particular attention to emergency contexts.

DEMAC and IOM strive to provide different but complementary platforms for peer-to-peer exchange to support diaspora humanitarianism and leadership. Through this partnership and contribution to IOM’s Framework, such an enabling environment will be promoted to elevate diasporas' impact and technical capacity. Overall, this will benefit the humanitarian responses carried out by diasporas and the communities they seek to serve.