History
The origins of AIM stem from 1992, when thousands of refugees from war-torn Yugoslavia flooded into the Czech Republic. In that same year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) opened an office in Prague. A representative of this office approached the Czechoslovak Helsinki Committee with a plan for a joint venture. A lawyer and a social worker began to visit the emerging humanitarian centres and subsequently concluded a contract between the Czech Helsinki Committee and the UNHCR for providing legal and psychological assistance to refugees. In October 1993, with assistance from the Canadian Embassy in Prague, the Counselling Centre for Refugees of the Czech Helsinki Committee opened its doors. UNHCR remained the main funding provider.
The work with refugees from former Yugoslavia was shortly followed by work with refugees from other parts of the world. The number of clients and problematic issues were continuously increasing and so in 1998 a separate Counselling Centre for Integration was established out of the Counselling Centre for Refugees– its purpose was to deal with asylum seekers and foreign communities. At the same time another civic society, the Centre for Migration Issues, was established – its main goals were to deal with the problems of migration and the integration of foreign nationals into Czech society. Towards the end of 2002, the Counselling Centre for Refugees became independent of the Czech Helsinki Committee, becoming a separate civic society on January 1st, 2003.
Another big change occurred in 2008, when the Counselling Centre for Refugees (CCR) merged with the Centre for Migration Issues (CIM) and adopted a new name, the Association for Integration and Migration (AIM).
