25.01.2017 ROMANIA // Understanding the NIEM indicators in the Romanian context
On January 25th, the Center for Public Innovation in Romania held the first national coalition preparatory meeting for the NIEM project. The event was organized with support from the UNHCR Romania and was hosted at the UN House in Bucharest. The idea behind the event was to present the research done on behalf of the NIEM project to the representatives of the NGOs within the field of migration and integration in order to receive feedback on the work done thus far. The participants, representing 5 organizations, received a detailed presentation of the research indicators 10 days before the meeting and were asked to provide their feedback and opinions on how to better cover all the indicators within the context of Romania. During the meeting the discussion tackled the following aspects: the availability of reliable data in Romania, the relevance of the categories of beneficiaries for the Romanian context, the best ways to reach beneficiaries, etc.
After analyzing the indicators, the experts agreed that while the Legal and Administrative components are not that difficult to assess, the Financial and Outcome Indicators will be very challenging to cover thoroughly in the case of Romania. This is due to the fact that Romanian public authorities have a tendency to direct all the migration / integration inquiries to the General Inspectorate for Immigration. This is in spite of the laws that assign responsibilities to a number of public institutions outside of the purview of the General Inspectorate for Immigration, thereby limiting accessible and reliable data on refugees and other categories of protected persons. Besides knowing the numbers of these categories, there are no other relevant statistics concerning their specific situation (in terms of access to housing, medical care, education, social care, etc.), their needs and their satisfaction with their lives in Romania. In order to address this challenge, the national researchers will work closely with all the national experts involved directly in the reception / integration process as well as with the UNHCR national team.
After analyzing the indicators, the experts agreed that while the Legal and Administrative components are not that difficult to assess, the Financial and Outcome Indicators will be very challenging to cover thoroughly in the case of Romania. This is due to the fact that Romanian public authorities have a tendency to direct all the migration / integration inquiries to the General Inspectorate for Immigration. This is in spite of the laws that assign responsibilities to a number of public institutions outside of the purview of the General Inspectorate for Immigration, thereby limiting accessible and reliable data on refugees and other categories of protected persons. Besides knowing the numbers of these categories, there are no other relevant statistics concerning their specific situation (in terms of access to housing, medical care, education, social care, etc.), their needs and their satisfaction with their lives in Romania. In order to address this challenge, the national researchers will work closely with all the national experts involved directly in the reception / integration process as well as with the UNHCR national team.