IOM Mexico is this week providing technical assistance and relief
supplies to a migrant shelter on Mexico's southern border town of
Ixtepec, Oaxaca.

Following the signing of a cooperation agreement with the
migrant shelter Albergue Hermanos en el Camino, IOM is providing
first aid and human rights training to shelter personnel and
volunteers to strengthen the shelter's capacity to assist migrants,
as well as assistance packages containing hygiene products,
clothing, shoes, and a tortilla making machine which produces 14
tortillas per minute.

The shelter, which has been operational since 2007, provides
shelter, food and basic medical assistance to more than 120
migrants each day, most of them from Central American countries who
cross the Mexican territory on their journey to the United
States. 

It is estimated that more than 200,000 migrants from Latin
America, but also from countries outside the region, cross into
Mexico every year; most of them undocumented.

IOM is providing support to Albergue Hermanos en el Camino and
six other shelters in the southern border area as part of the US
State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration
(PRM) project aimed at strengthening the capacities of migrant
shelters in the southern border areas of Mexico and Guatemala
through in-kind contributions and first aid training to shelters
staff and volunteers and government assistance groups, such as the
National Migration Institute's Migrant Rescue Units called Grupos
Beta.

"In the past months, migrants have been facing an increasing
number of dangers and violations to their human rights during their
journey north. Abductions and torture by criminal organizations
along the migrant route in order to extort money from the migrants'
family members in the United States has become a harsh reality,
alleviated only through the network of church-run or privately
administered migrant shelters. IOM´s work along Mexico's
southern border has allowed us to identify the shelters' most
urgent needs and to collaborate closely with local government in
order to provide humane assistance to thousands of migrants,"
explains Dr. Thomas Lothar Weiss, IOM Mexico Chief of Mission.

For more information, please contact:

Luis Flores

IOM Mexico

Tel: +52 962 642 56 74

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