Mission Background Guiding Principles Partners CIMI Movie
Mission
CIMI’s mission is to promote good practices in the fields of migration and integration and to assist policy makers and practitioners of both host and home countries, as well as migrants themselves, manage the challenges of migration and integration more effectively. Through our activities – courses, consultations, and projects – we seek to build a network of practitioners who can benefit from each other's experience and provide guidance in upgrading current approaches and developing new ones. |
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Background
Based in Israel, CIMI draws upon extensive Israeli practical expertise in the fields of immigrant integration and diaspora-homeland partnerships to benefit other countries facing similar challenges. At the same time CIMI strives to apply relevant international expertise to address pressing issues of international migration in Israel, particularly in the areas of asylum, migration and human trafficking.
Israel is a society deeply rooted in immigration and has committed extensive resources to immigrant integration. More than three million of the country's 6.5 million citizens are immigrants and many of the rest are the children and grandchildren of the newcomers. Immigration to Israel is characterized by enormous diversity with immigrants coming from over 100 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, North and South America and speaking dozens of different languages.
In the past decade alone, Israel faced a broad range of integration challenges with the arrival of approximately one million immigrants from across the former Soviet Union and from Ethiopia, which in peak years reached 200,000/year.
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Year |
No. of Immigrants |
Comments |
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1989 |
24,050 |
Start of ‘Operation Exodus’ |
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1990 |
199,516 |
35,629 in December alone |
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1991 |
176,100 |
152,142 from Europe/Asia
20,251 from Ethiopia |
With a population consisting of Jews, Muslims, Christians, Bedouin and Druze and immigrants from around the world, Israel is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-lingual and multi-religious state. Israel also has benefited from strong ties with its Diaspora communities, developed through numerous forms of partnership. This rich and varied experience makes Israel a source of practical models on many aspects of managing migration, multicultural integration, and diaspora-homeland ties. At the same time, as Israel has become a recipient of labor migrants, victims of trafficking, and asylum seekers and refugees, it can benefit from the experience of others in these fields. |
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Guiding Principles
CIMI activities are guided by the following principles:
Integrating theory and practice:
Theory offers practitioners a good starting point, but can only guide them so far when it comes to translating policies into daily practice. CIMI seeks to tap into the expertise that practitioners gain through the implementation of theory, policies, and ideology, and to share it to benefit others.
Applicability:
The fundamental operating principles of successful practices can be effectively adapted to other contexts. Practical models and experience shared through CIMI activities and written materials should be applicable, relevant, and useful.
Inter-disciplinary approach:
The problems of migration and integration cut across multiple sectors and require an inter-disciplinary and holistic approach in order to be effectively addressed.
Knowledge exchange:
Sharing information and knowledge based on practitioners’ experience can provide critical direction to others struggling with the same issues. It is a mutually beneficial two-way process.
Measurable impact:
CIMI undertakes to document, evaluate and follow up on all courses and projects as part of its efforts to develop effective practices and measure the long-term impact of our activities.
Participation of all stakeholders:
To be effective, migration management depends on the active participation of all key stakeholders – ranging from home countries to host countries, governmental and non-governmental organizations, migrants and migrant communities.
Inspiration:
We believe in the possibility of improving the ways that states and migrants address the challenges of migration and integration. We seek to share this commitment towards change and to enable others to realize this potential. The Jewish principle of tikkun olam, fixing the world, is a universal one. |
| Partners
CIMI operates in partnership with governmental and non-governmental agencies, including the International Organization for Migration (IOM), with whom CIMI has had Observer Status since 2003; the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); the International Committee of the Red Cross; the Center for International Cooperation (MASHAV), of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption and other national and international organizations |
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