2025 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

The Municipal Plan for Migration Governance is the strategy for planning, implementation, citizen participation, and monitoring of the local policy on international migration in the Municipality of Quilmes. It aims to promote the full integration of migrants and refugees through a comprehensive rights-based approach.

Quilmes is one of the 135 municipalities that make up the Province of Buenos Aires in the Republic of Argentina. With an estimated population of 636,026 inhabitants, it plays a strategic role due to its density and socio-economic structure, as a "peripheral" city in the Greater Buenos Aires area.

However, in 2019, when the Plan began, there was a significant disparity in access to rights and essential public services between different neighborhoods. This situation particularly affected migrant and refugee communities in a district known for its interculturalism.

In Quilmes, there are 43,968 migrant and refugee individuals, a number that is double the national average in Argentina, representing 7% of the local population, with over 50 communities from various countries present.

In this context, and in a national and international scenario where migration is increasingly used as a "scapegoat" for the multiple crises of the system, the Plan has been an effort to ensure safe, orderly, and regular migration, with the active and efficient role of the local government and collaborative work with the private sector, academia, and civil society.

Structured around four strategic pillars (access to rights; strengthening institutions and communities; training and socio-labor inclusion; promoting interculturality), throughout its development in different phases, it has managed to respond to and encourage the participation of thousands of neighbors in the district.

Therefore, it is an innovative and practically unprecedented experience for an Argentine municipality, reflected in this instrument of ongoing development in collaboration with citizen and community participation. It addresses a dynamic reality, acting flexibly but with a clear goal: to promote the comprehensive development of migrant and refugee communities in the district, thereby consolidating a more democratic and egalitarian society.

For more information: https://www.quilmes.gov.ar/ (External link)