There is growing tension and frustration among thousands of
migrants stranded at Libya's borders with Tunisia and Egypt
desperate to be evacuated home.

More than 22,000 migrants are at either Ras Adjir on the
Tunisian-Libyan border or at Salum, on the Egyptian-Libyan border,
impatient to be evacuated. Thousands of migrants have been at the
border areas for many days, where freezing night-time temperatures,
difficult shelter and sanitation conditions as well as the trauma
of their flight from Libya have taken their toll.

Although IOM and partners including many governments and the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have assisted nearly 30,000
migrants to return home so far, with another 4,100 to be evacuated
today, 15 March, little headway will be achieved in reducing the
large numbers at the border areas unless significant new funding is
provided urgently.

"On Monday, IOM evacuated nearly 4,000 migrants to Bangladesh,
Mali, Sudan and other countries. However, the night before, 7,580
people fled Libya. The math is clear. Evacuations have to be
dramatically scaled up to deal with an outflow of people that is
not going to stop for the foreseeable future," says Mohammed
Abdiker, IOM Director of Operations.

"We want to be able to evacuate 6,000 people daily. But for that
IOM urgently needs donors to provide substantial new funding
quickly, especially as we are made aware of more and more migrants
in need of help both inside and outside of Libya," he adds.

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This includes a group of 800 Ghanaians forced out of their homes
and onto the beaches of the Libyan city of Misrata, the Ghanaian
government has told IOM. The migrants have reportedly been told
they had two days to leave the country.

However, an IOM appeal for USD 49.2 million has only been 48 per
cent funded with donations from the Australian, Austrian, Irish,
Italian, Japanese, Swiss, British and US governments as well as
from the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil
Protection (ECHO) office and the UN's Central Emergency Response
Fund (CERF).

The Organization now has enough funds to continue evacuations
for another few days only.

More than 285,000 people have crossed into Tunisia, Egypt, Niger
and Algeria since the crisis began.

A UN team in Tripoli reported seeing large numbers of migrants
inside the airport and in makeshift camps outside it with
truckloads of mostly African migrants en route to the Tunisian
border.

The increase in the number of Africans reaching Libya's borders
in recent days has been a positive development. IOM had been
particularly concerned in the first few weeks of the crisis at the
low numbers of African migrants successfully getting to border
areas given their targeting inside Libya.

After Bangladeshi migrants, Ghanaians now represent the second
largest migrant group in need of assistance with Malians and
Sudanese following suit.

Tuesday's evacuations will focus on assisting Ghanaians and
Malians as well as Bangladeshis.

IOM is also working hard to assist more than 800 Senegalese,
Mauritanian and Bangladeshi migrants stranded on the
Algerian-Libyan border, the majority of them at Ain Amenas about
1,000 kms south-east from Algiers.

Since the start of the crisis, nearly 9,100 migrants have fled
to Algeria with the Algerian government having evacuated 2,770 of
them.

For further information, please contact:

In Ras Adjir/Djerba, Tunisia,

Jumbe Omari Jumbe

Tel: +41 79 812 7734

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

In Geneva, Switzerland,

Jemini Pandya

Tel: +41 22 717 9486

       +41 79 217 3374

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

or

Jean Philippe Chauzy

Tel. +41 79 285 4366

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