April 25 - Twelve Vietnamese citizens successfully traveled from Croatia to their country of origin, as part of the voluntary return and reintegration program (AVRR.hr) of the Croatian IOM office. After landing in Paris, they boarded a repatriation flight to Ho Chi Minh organized by the Vietnamese authorities for all their citizens who found themselves globally affected by the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

More precisely, twelve Vietnamese were temporarily working in Croatia, but as the pandemic caused the closure of many jobs, they, as a particularly vulnerable group of foreign workers, were among the first to be affected. Such a development of the situation forced them to make the decision to return to their homeland.

AVRR.hr program, with the help of the Vietnamese Embassy in Hungary, assisted them in all advisory and travel segments of their return. Among other things, this included the purchase of airline tickets, the organization of testing for COVID-19 as well as the provision of temporary accommodation in Zagreb after their arrival from Varaždin where they were employed.

Since the beginning of the AVRR program in Croatia, IOM Croatia has supported the return of a total of 67 migrants to their countries of origin, and most of these returns took place in conditions adapted to the declaration of the COVID-19 epidemic.

The Croatian National Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration  Assistance Programme  (AVRR.HR) will carry on to provide assistance to migrants in Croatia who wish to return voluntarily to their country of origin, supporting their return decision and assisting in their socio-economic integration. All detailed information can be obtained on the dedicated multilingual website for the IOM AVRR program in Croatia (www.avrr.hr).

The programme is funded by the Republic of Croatia, the Ministry of the Interior through the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) and implemented by International Organization for Migration (IOM).