IOM fully supports the on-going efforts to disseminate up-to-date
information on the earthquake and emergency reliefs to a variety of
migrant communities living in Japan.

There are various multilingual news services in Japan including
those provided by public broadcaster NHK and commercial networks
such as Wai Wai FM, which are available in Bahasa Indonesian,
Bengali, Chinese, English, Filipino, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish,
Swahili, Urdu, Thai and Vietnamese. These news services aim to fill
an information gap for non-Japanese speaking migrants by
disseminating vital information on where to access shelter, food
and medical assistance.

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Link alt="" border="0" height="12" hspace="0" src=
"/jahia/webdav/site/myjahiasite/shared/shared/mainsite/graphics/interface/icons_buttons/blue_link_box.gif"> "http://www.iomjapan.org/news/press_237.cfm" target="_blank" title=
"">IOM Japan website: Multilingual information services

"The Japanese media, national and local governments, NGOs are
doing an extraordinary job providing the latest available
information to the population. IOM is in support of further efforts
to reach out to the various groups of migrants who are not fluent
in Japanese," says Akio Nakayama, IOM's Senior Regional Adviser for
Asia.

Multilingual information services are posted on the IOM Japan
mission website at: "http://www.iomjapan.org/news/press_237.cfm" target="_blank" title=
"">http://www.iomjapan.org/news/press_237.cfm

According to the Ministry of Justice, 2.18 million foreign
nationals were registered as living in Japan in 2009. This includes
Chinese, Korean and Japanese descendants from Brazil, Peru, and
Asian countries, some of whom also reside in the areas most
affected by the earthquake and tsunami.

There are growing concerns over the many and particular
challenges that migrants in these areas are facing due to language
barriers including lack of access to critical information, loss of
documents and property as well as difficulties in regaining contact
with families back home.

This outreach effort is funded through IOM's modest Emergency
Preparedness Account (EPA), which allows IOM to carry immediate
emergency assessment and operations prior to the receipt of donor
funding.

For more information, please call:

Jean-Philippe Chauzy

IOM Geneva

Tel: +41 22 717 93 61

       +41 79 285 43 66

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