As growing numbers of Chadian migrants try to re-enter Libya in
search of jobs, IOM is urging donors to provide badly needed funds
to implement reintegration and community stabilization programmes
especially in areas of high return and border regions of Borkou and
Ennedi.

Since the return of more than 120,000 Chadian migrants from
Libya, IOM programmes to help returnees reintegrate in their
communities, sometimes after decades, remain desperately
under-funded. Only Germany has so far provided funding to help IOM
to provide psychosocial assistance and social reintegration to
Chadian returnees in some areas of high return.

Few options for the returnees have led to dissatisfaction and
despair and some are now attempting to re-enter Libya, often
without documents.

Recently, the Chadian government asked IOM to assist a group of
110 undocumented Chadian and Sub-Saharan Africans to return to
their homes after they were found destitute while attempting to
cross into Libya. Many in the group were former migrants
repatriated from Libya during the crisis, unable to find jobs in
their own countries.

According to the Governor of Bourkou region, bordering Libya,
the group included vulnerable migrants who were stranded at the
desert border crossing with no food or water. IOM sent a team to
the area and extracted the migrants from a potentially a
life-threatening situation. 

IOM helped the non-Chadians, who included Nigerian, Senegalese,
Malian, Sudanese and Guinean nationals, to get temporary travel
documents from their embassies and flew them to their respective
countries. The Chadian nationals were also helped to return to
their places of origin.

An IOM impact assessment study carried out in areas of high
return in the country between January and March this year revealed
that most Chadian returnees from Libya face daily challenges due to
lack of work. Many were unable to meet their basic needs, including
food, housing, health and education.

“They are extremely vulnerable and cannot cope with their
new life initially without support. Additionally, the IOM profiling
exercise found that most returnees had only limited education.
Funds are needed for vocational training, as well as for the
provision of special assistance to their children, who do not speak
the Chadian Arabic,” says IOM Chad Chief of Mission Qasim
Sufi.

Meanwhile, ten trucks carrying 705 Chadian migrants told to
leave Libya have now arrived in the Chadian town of Faya Largeau.
The migrants were in the country without proper documents. Others
have left Libya on their own, fleeing from tribal clashes in the
south of the country.

 

On 3rd July, 2012, the Chadian authorities informed IOM of the
arrival of the first convoy of 360 migrants, travelling from the
southern Libyan town of Gatroun.  They asked IOM for urgent
assistance to meet the basic needs of those arriving at Faya
Largeau, including the provision of food, non-food relief items,
medical care and psychosocial support, as well as onward
transportation to other final destinations in the country.

All the migrants have now been assisted to reach their areas of
origin in the country, except 16 individuals who were admitted to
Faya Largeau hospital suffering from various illnesses. Another
four migrants died en route to the border.

For more information, please contact

Qasim Sufi

IOM Chad

Tel. +235 62900674 

Email: "mailto:qsufi@iom.int">qsufi@iom.int