As IOM Rescue Operation for Migrants Stranded in Misrata Continue, Many Thousands More Migrants Need Urgent Help Elsewhere
A third IOM-chartered boat bringing more humanitarian aid into the
besieged city of Misrata is due to arrive in the port later today
with the aim of rescuing more stranded migrants.
The boat, the Ionian Spirit, left Benghazi on Tuesday night
carrying 500 tons of food, medical supplies, hygiene kits and
non-food items donated mainly by the Libyan private sector with
some aid provided by Qatar and the U.A.E. Red Crescent.
A Libyan non-governmental organization Libaid has donated the
hygiene kits, medical supplies, hospital wheelchairs and four
generators for hospital use.
Also on board are a team of 13 doctors with differing
specializations. Two of the doctors who will relieve colleagues
working in the hospital in Misrata will also refer critical but
stable cases to IOM for evacuation to Benghazi.
"The presence of a large group of doctors with different
specializations means greater capacity and more flexibility to
assist those critically wounded or sick on board for the return
journey to Benghazi," said IOM operational leader Jeremy Haslam as
the boat departed.
However, the main focus of this third IOM operation to rescue
stranded migrants in Misrata is to bring as many migrants as
possible to safety.
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"">Libya Migration Crisis Website
In particular, the Organization is hoping to target a large
number of migrants from Niger. Of the estimated 5,000 migrants
around the port area, more than 3,200 are believed to be
Nigeriens.
"We don’t know whether we will be able to reach them,
however. If they are not close to the port, then it will be
extremely hard to access them given the security conditions in the
city," Haslam added.
In two previous missions funded by the European
Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Office
(ECHO), IOM has rescued more than 2,100 people from Misrata, nearly
100 of them Libyans.
New funding of one million Euros from the German government and
£1.5 million (US$2.4m) from Britain’s Department for
International Development (DFID), as well as funding from the US
State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration
(PRM), will allow IOM to continue its rescue operations from
Misrata where about 5,000 migrants are still believed to be
stranded, to the eastern port city of Benghazi.
However, a critical shortage of funds means that while the
migrants are brought to relative safety in Benghazi, they will
remain stranded there without additional means.
"Taking the migrants out of the line of fire is life-saving, but
by not being able to take them out of Libya and safely home means
their plight has simply been transplanted to another location,"
says IOM Director of Operations and Emergencies, Mohammed
Abdiker.
"This is true for all the migrants who we need to help inside
Libya and for those who have managed to cross Libya’s borders
with its neighbours."
More than 5,000 migrants on the Egyptian, Tunisian and Nigerien
borders with Libya are still in need of evacuation to their home
countries.
Among the many identified groups of migrants needing urgent
evacuation from inside Libya are a group of nearly 30,000 Chadians,
including women and children, marooned in Gatroun. IOM is in
discussions with the Libyan and Chadian authorities on accessing
the group.
It comes as the number of Chadians crossing into Chad from Libya
has dramatically increased with a growing number of the migrants
stranded in northern towns such as Faya and Kaliyit. The migrants
are all dehydrated, extremely tired and in need of food.
An IOM transit centre at Faya, where UNHCR has provided tents to
accommodate arrivals, which has a capacity of 750 people is now
overflowing.
"An airlift to Ndjamena is the only option. But again this is a
costly operation," Abdiker states. "We are in a position where we
have beefed up our operational presence at the Chadian border
points to cope with the number of arrivals but we have no money to
evacuate the migrants from these isolated desert areas to the
Chadian capital."
Working with various Embassies, an IOM operation begun some
weeks ago to evacuate stranded migrants in Tripoli by bus to the
Tunisian border will be difficult to continue.
Only yesterday, 19 April, IOM evacuated a group of 100 Beninois
migrants from the Libyan capital, including women and infants.
IOM appealed for about US$160 million dollars for its response
to the Libyan crisis with much of the funding to provide evacuation
assistance from both inside and outside Libya. The Organization has
received to date US$65 million, all of it except the new funding
spent on operations that have helped return more than 115,000
migrants return to their home countries and evacuate many thousands
from inside Libya to Egypt and Tunisia.
For further information, please contact:
Jean Philippe Chauzy
IOM Geneva
Tel: +41 22 717 9361
+41 79 285 4366
E-mail:
"mailto:pchauzy@iom.int">pchauzy@iom.int
or
Jemini Pandya
IOM Geneva
Tel: +41 22 717 9486
+41 79 217 3374
E-mail:
"mailto:jpandya@iom.int">jpandya@iom.int
or
Jumbe Omari Jumbe
Tel: +41 22 717 9405
+41 79 812 7734
E-mail:
"mailto:jjumbe@iom.int">jjumbe@iom.int