In early December, IOM Czechia in cooperation with ARCHA+ organized the inaugural edition of the Voices of Migration festival, which took place in the run-up to International Migrants Day. The event, which focused primarily on the younger generations living in Czechia, aims to open up the topic of migration as a common part of both global and Czech society. People come to Czechia for work, family or new opportunities, and so do Czechs go abroad. The rich programme, which ran from afternoon until night, offered a podcast with young people with migration experience, Stand Up Comedy, Slam Poetry, a panel discussion and musical performances.

The main part of the programme was a panel discussion, with topics co-created by festival-goers themselves, who could share areas of interest when registering. The moderator of this debate was Tomáš Lindner, Head of Foreign Affairs at the respected Czech weekly Respekt. Fatima Rahimi, a journalist with her own migration experience, took part in the discussion, as she and her family, with whom she came to the Czech Republic from Afghanistan as a young child, spent some time in refugee facilities themselves. Another guest was security expert Pavel Bacík, who headed the Czech Ministry of Interior's Refugee Facilities Administration for nine years. The third participant in the debate was Professor Josef Novotný, a lecturer at the Faculty of Science of Charles University, whose main area of study is environmentalist development, and human migration in particular. Thus, the debate on the topic of migration, which is very topical today, brought together three perspectives: personal and journalistic, security and academic.