IOM and partners pushed forward with the voluntary relocation of
thousands of Haitians displaced by the January 12 earthquake, as
part of a Government of Haiti–led process to find safe
shelter during the rainy season.

IOM had by Thursday evening welcomed 1,417 people to a new site
at Corail Cesselesse, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.  The
new residents were relocated from the Petionville Golf Club camp,
where 7,500 people lived in areas deemed unsafe and in need of
emergency engineering works.

Relocation to the new site is the last in a series of options
available to Haitians, which ranges from returning to a house
certified as safe, to finding a host family to stay with, to
temporary accommodation in the new sites until more durable
solutions are found.

The number of people relocated from Golf Club to Corail has
increased each day of the process, rising from 62 individuals on
April 10 to 521 individuals on April 15. A total of 418 tents have
been erected. As provider of last resort, IOM is currently acting
as Corail camp manager until an identified partner is ready to take
over.

Meanwhile outreach activities gathered pace in the Vallée
de Bourdon, along a river bed between Petionville and
Port-au-Prince centre. A community of 2,500 people has been
informed that their area has been found to be at risk by military
and international community engineers. Debris in the river has
increased the risk of flooding, and heavy rains are expected to
render the area all but inaccessible to humanitarians in case of an
emergency.

Residents have been offered the choice of relocation to a site
at Tabarre Issa, not far from the US embassy on the Route de
Tabarre in Port-au-Prince, run by the aid agency Concern.

On Tuesday and Wednesday teams of social mobilizers from the
International Rescue Committee (IRC) were deployed to explain the
situation to Vallée de Bourdon communities. On Thursday
engineers visited the site to identify the areas most at risk, and
registration and information centres were established at key points
around the valley. Movement is expected to begin on Saturday, and
to take at least four to five days.

Meanwhile IOM registration teams said they had now registered
300,000 displaced Haitians, as part of an ongoing exercise to
gather clear information about an estimated 2.1 million displaced
countrywide, in order to more accurately target priority
assistance. The process of registering residents in the Place de la
Paix camp, a large square in central Port au Prince, began
Thursday.

For further information please contact:

Mark Turner

IOM Haiti

Tel +509 37025066/ +509 34906678

E-mail: "mailto:mturner@iom.int">mturner@iom.int or "paragraph-link-no-underline" href=
"mailto:markyturner@yahoo.com">markyturner@yahoo.com