IOM is preparing to evacuate more than 400 Mauritanian migrants
back home by bus after receiving an urgent request from the
Mauritanian Embassy for support.

With violence in Cote d'Ivoire having again escalated in the
past few weeks, leading to an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people
being displaced in Abidjan alone, increasing numbers of migrants
and Ivorians are fleeing the country.

The Mauritanian Embassy in Abidjan has already evacuated nearly
1,800 Mauritanians by bus but still has several hundreds of its
nationals camped out in insalubrious conditions in the embassy's
vicinity.

An estimated 40,000 Mauritanians are living and working in Cote
d'Ivoire, 10,000 of whom are in Abidjan, according to the Mauritian
Embassy in Abidjan.

The vast majority of them either own or work in small business
and are men without accompanying families. Mauritanian migrants say
they feel particularly threatened and targeted and as a result,
want to return home.

IOM, which is organizing the transport and logistics of the
evacuation, will have staff in Mali and in Mauritania to support
the convoy en route. The convoy will leave Abidjan on 16 March and
will travel north through the capital Yamoussoukro and then onto
Bouaké before crossing the Ivoirian Malian border in Pogo.
The convoy is scheduled to arrive in the south-eastern Mauritanian
town of Néma on Monday.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and World Food Programme
(WFP) are also supporting the evacuation by providing fitness to
travel checks before departure, yellow fever vaccinations and high
energy biscuits for the migrants for the journey.

The evacuations come as IOM staff in Ghana report that while
previously the country was only seeing a small trickle of Ivorian
refugees crossing the border, increasing numbers are now arriving.
About 100 Ivorian asylum-seekers crossed into Ghana overnight on
11-12th March.  There are now 440 Ivorian asylum-seekers in
Ghana, 34 Third Country Nationals and more than 6,000 Ghanaian
migrants who have returned home.

An IOM team is based at Takoradi on the Ghanaian/Ivorian border
from where it transports Ivorian asylum-seekers to refugee camps
further inland as well as assists third country nationals who are
fleeing into Ghana from Cote d'Ivoire.

Although IOM is providing assistance to Ivorian refugees and
internally displaced, returning migrants and third country
nationals fleeing to any of Cote d'Ivoire's neighbours, it is being
severely hampered in its efforts by a severe lack of funds to
respond.

"The crisis is a regional one. It is affecting at least 400,000
people and probably more. Those fleeing are leaving with very
little and often arriving with nothing as they are robbed along the
way. With no jobs or means of income and with families back home to
support, their situation is desperate. There is so much to do and
so much more that IOM can do if the resources were available. IOM
is once again appealing to donors to not forget the humanitarian
crisis that continues to unfold in this part of the world," says
IOM's Director General William Lacy Swing.

Out of an initial USD 3.5 million appeal for the Cote d'Ivoire
crisis in January to assist those displaced within and across its
borders, IOM has still only received USD 700,000 funding pledge
from the US State Department Bureau of Population, Refugee and
Migration (PRM).

In Guinea, where more than 3,500 returning Guinean migrants and
Ivorian refugees have arrived and more crossing on a daily basis,
the situation is precarious for the displaced and host communities
in the border towns of Sinko, Beyla and Foumbadou in the Forest
region.

Most of the refugees and returning migrants don't want to be
taken to refugee camps or back to their home villages and are
instead staying with host families in very difficult conditions in
the three towns.

There is an urgent need for the reinforcement and refurbishment
of health care centres and primary schools in the towns which are
currently in a deplorable condition, with local authorities
requesting assistance from IOM in carrying out the work.

The Organization is also highlighting the need to provide
livelihood support to at least 2,500 refugees and returning
migrants who want to remain in the area. With the crisis in Cote
d'Ivoire being a protracted one, such assistance is critical.

For further information, please contact:

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

or

Jemini Pandya

Tel: +41 22 717 9486

        +41 79 217 3374

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