News
Alliance with the Private Sector to Provide Work Opportunities to the demobilized
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) will sign an agreement with the Colombian Confederation of Chambers of Commerce (Confecamaras) and the Presidential High Commissioner for Reintegration (ACR) on October 28 at the Casa de Nariño, in an effort to join forces with the private sector and provide working opportunities for 850 demobilized people and others in vulnerable conditions.
The event will be led by William R. Brownfield, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia; Eugenio Marulanda, Confecamaras Chairman; José Angel Oropeza IOM Chief of Mission in Colombia and Frank Pearl, High Commissioner for Reintegration and Peace.
This project hopes to provide 750 jobs and 100 productive projects that will strengthen the reintegration process of demobilized people into civilian life, and therefore contribute to the quest for peace in the country. This initiative is worth over US$1.6 million of which US$701,000 were provided by USAID and US$927,000 by Confecamaras.
Confecamaras will work with 12 other regional chambers of commerce to help support this initiative in the regions of Uraba, Monteria, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Valledupar, Bucaramanga, Barranquilla, Cucuta, Villavicencio, Cali, Sincelejo and Ibague. The first phase will include a polling of businesses in the region, so as to indentify how businessmen perceive reintegration and analyze their willingness to hire former combatants as their employees.
The project is planning to include the creation of a Regional Employment and Sustainability Fund (FRE in Spanish) that will collect international cooperation and private sector funds, to create incentives that would guarantee the participation of businesses in this project.
To this date, 26 chambers of commerce have signed up and 50 companies have shown interest in participating in the event.
Bogota D.C., October 27, 2009