IOM experts says healthcare, education ‘inaccessible’ for displaced migrants

Anjali Sharma

GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 9th April. UN migration experts said on Monday that only 1 in 2 countries offer guaranteed healthcare and educational access to all migrants.

International Organization for Migration in a new report into migrants’ rights and opportunities found that only 18 per cent of European countries provided access to healthcare and just 27 per cent offered free schooling.

It noted that’s well below the 70 per cent of countries offering medical coverage in the Americas, where primary and secondary education is available in 58 per cent of the region’s States.

The report said that the constitutions of many countries prohibit any discrimination based on nationality, race or place of birth, guaranteed access for migrants to health and education is rarely specified in other legislation.

IOM pointed out that the Gambia and Portugal have done so since 2008 and 2020, respectively.

The agency said that all countries should explicitly guarantee essential services for all migrants, just as Brazil did in 2020, “for migrant children and adolescents, refugees, stateless people and asylum-seekers” wanting to go to school.

Portugal in 2019 amended health laws to include “foreign permanent and temporary residents, stateless persons, applicants for international protection and migrants” it stated.

IOM’s findings came from surveying 100 countries, including 37 from Africa, 27 from the Americas, 25 from Asia and the Pacific and 11 from Europe, the report added.