Italy - A six-month training provided by the Italian Coast Guard to Coast Guard officers from the Republic of Yemen ended yesterday (12/11) in Rome.

The Italian Coast Guard partnered with IOM and the International Maritime Safety Security Environment Academy to provide the training to 15 officers from the Yemen Coast Guard, the Regional Maritime Information Sharing Centre (ReMISC) and the Yemeni Transport Administration.

IOM Rome was responsible for training on Management of Migration Flows, which included modules provided by UNHCR and Save the Children, IOM’s partners in providing assistance to the migrants landing in the southern Italy costal area, through the Project Praesidium, funded by the Italian Ministry of the Interior. The training was carried out in two phases:  the first in Genoa, the second in Rome and Messina.

“Thousand of migrants, mostly Somalis, try to reach Yemen every year, and many die while crossing the Gulf of Aden,” says José Angel Oropeza, Director of the IOM Coordinating Office for the Mediterranean.

“The same thing has been happening in Italy, where many migrants have been lost at sea while trying to reach Lampedusa. About 2,000 migrants, coming from Tunisia and Libya, died in 2011, but the Italian Coast Guard succeeded in saving many lives in dangerous and extreme situations,” he adds.

“The Italian and the Yemeni situations are similar in many ways and one of the aims of the training sessions was to illustrate the best practices and experiences acquired by the Italian Coast Guard in the rescue operations carried out off Sicily,” he notes.

For more information, please contact

Flavio Di Giacomo
IOM Italy
Tel: +39 06 44186207
Email: fdigiacomo@iom.int