IOM is appealing for USD 3.7 million to help thousands of families
affected by inter-ethnic conflict in southern Kyrgyzstan.

The appeal, which is part of a wider UN Flash Appeal for USD 71
million, includes USD 1.47 million for the delivery of essential
non-food relief items, including emergency shelter materials to
repair damaged homes; USD 420,000 for emergency logistics to move
displaced people and deliver humanitarian aid for relief agencies;
USD 805,000 to provide clean water and sanitation for displaced
families; and USD 1 million for emergency psycho-social assistance
to crisis-affected communities.

With as many as a million people displaced by the conflict,
trapped in their homes or sheltering in host communities, there is
a desperate need for food and non-food relief supplies in southern
Kyrgyzstan.

IOM's deliveries of non-food relief items, in close cooperation
with the government and partners,  will focus on 40,000
internally displaced people (IDPs) in makeshift camps on the Kyrgyz
side of the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border and some 170,000 others seeking
refuge in neighboring host
communities.     

The agency's emergency logistics programme will deploy and
manage a truck fleet in Osh and Jalal-Abad to provide safe
transportation for IDPs and to deliver life-saving aid on behalf of
IOM and partner relief agencies. 

IOM's water and sanitation programme, in cooperation with the
government, UNICEF and NGO partners, will target displaced people
and affected communities in Osh and Jalal-Abad, providing the clean
water and sanitation needed to prevent the spread of water and
vector-borne diseases.

IOM's psycho-social support programme, in cooperation with the
Ministry of Health, WHO and NGO partners, will focus on
conflict-affected communities in Osh, Jalal-Abad and Bishkek. It
aims to reach an estimated 100,000 people, many of whom have been
traumatized by the violence that erupted in the region on June
10th.     

According to reports, as many as 2,000 people may have died in
the past two weeks, with thousands of others injured. Some 375,000
are believed to have been displaced by the fighting. Of these, some
75,000 managed to flee into neighboring Uzbekistan, before the
Uzbek government closed the border.

Kyrgyzstan has been an IOM Member State since November 2000. IOM
project areas in the Central Asian republic include technical
cooperation in migration management, labour migration, counter
trafficking, refugee resettlement and pre-consular services.

For more information please contact:

Zlatko Zigic

IOM Bishkek

Tel. +996.31261245

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