In the Words of Isimeme Whyte: “With the art-based interventions, you give returnees new hope. It’s like a painkiller, it makes them see things differently”

Isimeme Whyte is a social impact entrepreneur and human rights advocate, working across a multitude of issues, including human trafficking and irregular migration, sexual and gender-based violence. At the age of 19, she founded Young Girls Foundation Nigeria, which has developed into the Genius Hub Global Initiative. One of the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) partners in Nigeria, Genius Hub facilitates skills training and entrepreneurship development programmes for over 3,500 youths, women and returned irregular migrants and survivors of human trafficking in Edo State.

“Edo’s youth want to move because of insecurity, because of a better life, because of infrastructure. Abroad they see a system that works: ‘if I’m working I get paid, if I’m sick, I get better healthcare.’ People want to travel because they feel life is better abroad and they build self-esteem through travelling.

Most Edo youth are not really looking at the side effects of travelling irregularly or being trafficked. They focus on the results of the successful returned migrants who have done well, who are now based here or who come to Nigeria every once in a while, and when they come, they come with big cars and the society celebrates them. It makes them feel like the only way they can be celebrated too is for them to travel out of the country.”

Nigeria is one of the top African migrant countries. According to the latest UN DESA figures, 1,670,455 were estimated to have left Nigeria in 2020, up from 1,256,408 the previous year, and almost threefold since 2000 (610,130). The percentage of irregular migration is difficult to determine as it occurs outside the regulatory norms of countries, and usually with the aim of avoiding detection. 

“At Genius Hub, we work with a lot of returnees who have returned without anything, it is really painful, traumatising to hear their story; especially if you talk to some of the girls and women, they were raped countless times, they were beaten, they were used as slaves. And as they’re returning to their country, there’s no acceptance. Families are feeling disappointed. In the first place, the child left because they wanted to improve their economic status and that of their family members. When they come back, most families have expectations: they have hopes that when this person returns, the economic status is better, you have a better life. There’s a gap between the returnees and their family members and communities. The returnees feel rejected a lot of the time and when they feel rejected in their circle of influence, they also feel disappointed in themselves. This is the most important factor of our work.”

IOM provides reintegration assistance to returning migrants to help them get back on their feet in their communities of origin. In cooperation with partners such as Genius Hub, returnees receive psychosocial support to determine vulnerabilities and their causes to offer tailored assistance.

“When we come in contact with them, we give them psychosocial support to help them heal in time. We provide them deep profiling to understand where they’re coming from, what they’ve been through, and what their plans are. We got trained by IOM. We already have our own curriculum, our own practice in providing psychosocial support to returnees; including themes such as gender-based violence, but having the training from IOM has made our curriculum very robust, and has made reintegration easy for us, for our returnees.

We’ve done quite a number of projects together with IOM. One thing they’ve done really well is exposing us to best practices, like programmes, training that will help our programme be sustainable, like Communication for Development was introduced to us by IOM, the art-based interventions were introduced by IOM, and have become part of our curriculum and are things that have helped the healing process of our beneficiaries.”

IOM uses arts-based interventions to strengthen returned migrants who have been exposed to violence, exploitation and abuse to share first-hand experiences through community-dialogue and peer education platforms. NGO partners are trained to provide the technique returning migrants as well as to the wider community; the approach aims to improve access to trusted information sources and promote informed decision-making by sensitizing potential migrants on regular migration options, vulnerabilities to trafficking in person and risks associated with irregular migration and associated consequences.

“We would like to expand to other African countries; we like the impact, the success stories. We want to work with IOM in other African countries. We just want to do more because we feel that a number of people will still need help and don’t have access to Genius Hub, and we feel with IOM, we should be able to reach out to more people.”