News
Global
14 August 2006

IOM Helps IDPs Return to South, Launches Funding Appeal

As IOM evacuations of foreign migrant workers pass the 10,000 mark,
the organization today started to help Lebanese IDPs to return to
the South and launched an appeal for US$26.4 million to fund
operations in Lebanon over the next six months.

The first IOM convoy of 20 buses and three trucks, organized
with a local NGO partner the Islamic Medical Society, is currently
leaving Beirut with some 800 IDPs returning to Tyre and the
surrounding area. On arrival, the returnees will be taken to a
transit centre run by the Tyre municipality, before IOM and its
partners arrange their onward transportation.

“We are trying to group people by village in each bus, so
we can take them all the way to their final destination, but
inevitably some people will have to transit in Tyre,” says
IOM Government Liaison Officer Georges Braidi.

IOM is working with the Tyre municipality to ensure that any
foreign migrant workers stranded in South Lebanon will be able to
return to Beirut on the empty buses either tonight or tomorrow,
given massive traffic congestion on the damaged Beirut – Tyre
coastal road.

IOM’s appeal for new funding comes as the needs of
Lebanon’s estimated one million IDPs in Lebanon and Syria are
becoming increasingly acute. Third country nationals are also
continuing to request evacuation to their home countries.

While it is not yet clear how many more migrant workers plan to
return home following Monday’s ceasefire, without additional
funding, IOM will be forced to suspend its third country national
evacuations later this week.

“We expect at least 1,000 more people to ask to be
evacuated in the next few days, but most people have a wait-and-see
attitude. Those with good jobs will obviously want to stay put if
they can and if the ceasefire holds,” says Jean Philippe
Chauzy, IOM’s spokesman in Beirut.

The Philippines and Vietnam have told their nationals that the
ceasefire represents an opportunity to leave. But other embassies,
including Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, plan to temporarily suspend
registration of evacuees in the hope that the situation will
stabilize and neither side will resume hostilities.

Numbers of migrant workers asking to be evacuated have grown
steadily over the past three weeks. Last week IOM evacuated 5,174
people, up from 1,856 in the last week of July.  The US$14.8
million operation was funded by the European Union and the USA.

Some 90% of the evacuees have been female domestic workers from
Sri Lanka (37.6%), the Philippines (29.3%), Ethiopia (19.6%) and
Bangladesh (7%). Other nationalities assisted include Iraqis,
Vietnamese, Sudanese, Ghanaians and Nepalis.

“These are countries with very large numbers of nationals
working in Lebanon, but without the capacity to carry out large
scale evacuations on their own,” says IOM Beirut Head of
Office Vincent Houver.

According to Houver, migrant domestic workers opting to leave
Lebanon with IOM have mostly comprised people terrified by the
bombing, but hoping to either return to Lebanon after the war or
subsequently find new, well-paid work elsewhere in the Middle
East.

“Some of these women have clearly been abused and
exploited. But others have obviously been well paid and decently
treated by their employers. Those who have worked here longest
– some for more than 20 years – are the most reluctant
to leave because thy often don’t have much to back to,”
says IOM spokesman Chauzy.

For more information, please contact:

Jean Philippe Chauzy in Beirut

Mobile: + 41 79 285 4366

Chris Lom in Geneva

Tel. + 41 22 717 9361

Mobile: + 66 1927 5215

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

Related Information

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