With 1,400 irregular migrants, mainly Ethiopians and Somalis,
having perished in 2007 alone in the attempt to cross the Gulf of
Aden using human smugglers, IOM is continuing efforts to sensitize
rural and urban communities in Ethiopia on the risks and dangers of
irregular migration.

A dialogue is being held today in the capital, Addis Ababa with
community-based institutions including the Ethiopian IDIR
Association, a self-help group which helps members and families
with financial and social help in the event of death, as well as
religious leaders in a bid to reach out to a greater number of
potential migrants.

Although the majority of Ethiopians using smugglers to get them
to the Middle East and beyond via Somalia, the Gulf of Aden and
Yemen, are from rural areas, there is little awareness of the
perils and misery of the journey to Bossasso in Somalia's Puntland,
the main departure point, and beyond.

The migrants are often abused physically and verbally, robbed
and at times abandoned in the Somali deserts with no money, papers,
food or water. Women and girls can often have the added ordeal of
rape. Those who reach Bossasso live in squalid conditions until
they manage to find the means to make the crossing to Yemen in the
smugglers' usually unseaworthy boats. Many thousands of Ethiopians
and Somalis have drowned over the years while trying to make the
crossing, not least because they've been thrown overboard by the
smugglers.

There is also little awareness too of the dangers of human
trafficking. Last week, IOM, supported by the Ethiopian and
Tanzanian governments, returned a group of victims of trafficking
from Dar-Es-Salaam to their homes in Ethiopia. More than 1,000
Ethiopians are believed to be languishing in prisons in the east
African country, most of whom had been either smuggled or
trafficked into Tanzania via Kenya en route to South Africa and
Europe.

The dialogue is intended to stir debate amongst community
members so that local solutions are found to address the problem of
irregular migration in addition to raising awareness of its
dangers.

"Involving religious leaders and traditional institutions have
been very effective and useful in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The
same can be applied in fighting irregular migration in the
country," says Charles Kwenin, IOM's chief of mission in Addis.

The community dialogue will help establish informal and formal
networks, sensitization through existing traditional institutions,
and the setting up of regular dialogue forums for a coordinated
action, he adds.

The dialogue is part of a bigger information campaign funded by
the Dutch government which will include radio shows in four
languages and is intended to scale-up outreach efforts particularly
among rural communities.

For further information, please contact:

Alem Brook

IOM Addis

Tel:  +251 11 551 1673

E-mail: "mailto:balem@iom.int" target="_blank" title=
"">balem@iom.int

or

Liyunet Demsis

E-mail: "mailto:dliyunet@iom.int" target="_blank" title=
"">dliyunet@iom.int