Australian Immigration and Citizenship Minister Chris Evans this
weekend visited IOM's refugee resettlement operations on the Thai-
Myanmar border and met with refugees scheduled to start new lives
in Australia this week.

The Minister took part in an IOM Australian Cultural Orientation
(AUSCO) class for children in Mae La camp and later met with a
group of 23 refugees bound for Australia at IOM’s Mae Sot
refugee processing centre.

Mae La camp, with a population of some 35,000, was established
in 1984 and is the largest of nine closed border camps housing a
total of 120,000 refugees from Myanmar. The camps are run by the
Thai Ministry of the Interior, supported by the United Nations and
international NGOs.

IOM currently provides medical screening, cultural orientation
and transport for refugees from Myanmar in the camps accepted for
resettlement by ten countries, including Australia.

In the first seven months of 2008, IOM helped 1,252 refugees to
resettle in Australia, some 678 of them from Mae La.

Over the same period IOM moved a total of some 12,196 refugees
from eight of the nine border camps to ten resettlement countries.
The vast majority – 10,164 – were accepted by the
United States.

Since 2004 IOM has helped some 52,000 refugees to leave Thailand
and start new lives abroad.

Other resettlement countries in addition to the United States
and Australia include Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand,
Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

For more information please contact:

Chris Lom

IOM Bangkok

Tel:  +66 819275215

E-mail: "mailto:clom@iom.int">clom@iom.int