Bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties for mi­grants to im­prove their stan­dard of liv­ing, ba­sic hu­man rights, ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion and em­pow­er­ment.

These are some of the im­prove­ments that non-gov­ern­ment groups would like to see in Trinidad and To­ba­go as In­ter­na­tion­al Mi­grants Day is ob­served to­day.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Rochelle Nakhid, co­or­di­na­tor of the Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty’s (LWC) Min­istry for Mi­grants and Refugees, said much has been said about the ben­e­fits mi­grants bring and how much in­ter­na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions are help­ing mi­grants. “Yet not enough is said about how mi­grants can be in­clud­ed in their own self-pro­tec­tion, how they can lead and ad­dress their own strug­gles, how they can and of­ten do help each oth­er, em­pow­er each oth­er, how their agency and lead­er­ship ca­pac­i­ties can be bet­ter har­nessed. Mi­grants don’t just bring skills for the labour force, they bring skills that can lead to their own in­clu­sion, em­pow­er­ment and self-re­liance. Yet they are rarely sup­port­ed to sup­port each oth­er. The roots of colo­nial­ism re­main so deep that there must be a sav­iour some­where who acts in their ‘best in­ter­est’, while their con­tri­bu­tions re­main over­looked, un­der-re­sourced and of­ten times, side­lined.”

Not­ing that at the LWC they hire mi­grants and refugees on their team, Nakhid said for this year so far they have as­sist­ed 15,931 mi­grants and refugees with food as­sis­tance.

She said they al­so help with cash, ed­u­ca­tion for chil­dren ex­clud­ed from school, psy­choso­cial sup­port, em­pow­er­ment ses­sions, le­gal sup­port and more.”

Nakhid’s prayer on this oc­ca­sion is that coun­tries around the world in­clud­ing T&T, would val­ue what mi­grants bring but al­so, who they are, as dig­ni­fied hu­man be­ings.

Mean­while, Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine, co-founder of the La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port (LAMS), said apart from glob­al warm­ing, forced mi­gra­tion is the sec­ond biggest prob­lem hit­ting the plan­et. While de­vel­oped coun­tries have sys­tems in place to deal with mi­gra­tion, she said T&T is still try­ing to learn how to han­dle this phe­nom­e­non. Not­ing that her group, as well as many oth­ers, face chal­lenges with pro­vid­ing food, cloth­ing and shel­ter for mi­grants, she added, “The prob­lems that we face is that we seem to have no clear cut poli­cies from of­fi­cials as to how they are han­dled but those of us work­ing on the ground know that ba­sic bread but­ter is­sues, we need to find em­ploy­ment, we need to em­pow­er peo­ple to earn a liv­ing for them­selves is a chal­lenge and while that can­not hap­pen so eas­i­ly every day we are pro­vid­ing sup­port not on­ly of food but we are try­ing to find jobs for peo­ple. There are sev­er­al health-re­lat­ed is­sues we have to deal with. There are moth­ers giv­ing birth, there are peo­ple with ter­mi­nal ill­ness­es and all kinds of needs,” Ram­nar­ine said.

She sug­gest­ed that this coun­try could take a page from oth­er coun­tries like Cana­da in their treat­ment of mi­grants. Ram­nar­ine added there needs to be more ad­vo­ca­cy for mi­grants’ rights.

Not­ing that while much has been achieved re­gard­ing the treat­ment of mi­grants, Juan Car­los Acos­ta, a mi­grant who works with LWC, said there is still a long road to be trav­elled.

“Thanks to or­gan­i­sa­tions that work with the UN through­out this blue world such as the Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty, who fight so that hu­man rights go from be­ing recog­nised (sic), to a con­di­tion in every hu­man be­ing that are for one rea­son or an­oth­er are in a vul­ner­a­ble sit­u­a­tion,” he added.