Friday 3 October 2003

Press Briefing Notes
Friday 3 October 2003
Spokesperson: Christopher Lom

1. IRAQ - IOM Will Support Medevac of 17 Children to Germany
2. BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA - IOM Reintegration of Ex-Soldiers Wins New Backing
3. ESTONIA - IOM Launches CT Research and Information Programme
4. THAILAND - Cartoon Raises Youth Awareness of Human Trafficking
5. GENEVA - Publications Catalogue 2003

IRAQ - IOM Will Support Medevac of 17 Children to Germany - On Monday IOM is scheduled to support the evacuation of a further 17 children from Baghdad to Germany for medical treatment unavailable in Iraq.

The evacuation of the children, who come from Baghdad, Basra and Nasiriyah, to hospitals in and around Mainz, is at the behest of the Rheinland-Pfalz Ministry of Health and Dr Said Fadly of the Association of Iraqi Doctors in Germany.

IOM's Medical Evacuation and Health Recontruction Programme in Iraq (MEHRPI) staff, who assisted in the selection of the patients, will ensure that the children and their family escorts arrive safely in Baghdad, where Coalition Provisional Authority has enlisted the help of the US Airforce to fly them from Iraq to Ramstein airbase in Germany.

On arrival, the children, aged between 2 and 17, will receive treatment including neuro, cardiac and reconstructive surgery.

The evacuation, which follows an earlier evacuation of five Iraqi children to Germany last week, will bring the number of Iraqi children evacuated to Germany with MEHRPI support to 22.

MEHRPI, which is supported by funding from ECHO and Kuwait, is a dual initiative combining selective medical evacuations with help to re-build Iraq's dilapidated specialist health care system. It matches patients who cannot be treated inside Iraq with free hospital beds and treatment offered by foreign donor countries.

To date 660 cases have been referred to MEHRPI by hospitals throughout Iraq. Some 216 have been identified as eligible for evacuation by international medical selection teams. Of 90 patients evacuated to 11 countries since late May, 23 have already returned to Iraq, following successful treatment.

A further two children of 11 evacuated to Austria in May returned home to Basra with IOM last Saturday. Five more returned last month and four others are still undergoing treatment.

Under MEHRPI, IOM identifies host hospitals, arranges travel documentation and transport for the patient and at least one family member, monitors treatment, provides feedback to families and, when the treatment is complete, coordinates transport back to Iraq.

BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA - IOM Reintegration of Ex-Soldiers Wins New Backing - An internationally-funded IOM project helping to retrain 7,913 former soldiers discharged from Bosnia & Herzegovina's (BiH) armed forces in 2002 has received new backing from Sweden and Norway.

The programme, which prepares the ex-soldiers for the civilian workforce, by providing counseling, training, job placements, agricultural tools and other trade-related equipment to help them start small businesses, has received Euro 600,000 from Sweden and Eur 200,000 from Norway.

This week, BiH's High Representative, Lord Paddy Ashdown, visited two new businesses started by former soldiers benefiting from the programme - Geocentar, a land surveying company created by seven former soldiers, and Dado, a shoe production company started by two former soldiers.

IOM's "Transitional Assistance for Discharged Soldiers" programme, initially funded by the US, British, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian and Polish governments, was set up in 2002 to help some 8,000 soldiers demobilized under a plan to downsize BiH's 33,000-strong army by 13,000 men.

Earlier this year, Ashdown ruled that BiH would have to continue the downsizing exercise in 2003 to have affordable armed forces in line with peacetime requirements by 1 January 2004.

This has resulted in an urgent need for additional funding to support soldiers discharged this year. The Swedish and Norwegian contributions will only partially meet the requirements and IOM is seeking new donors.

In July of this year, IOM started follow-up and monitoring of former soldiers who have already received assistance through the programme. Many face not only economic difficulties, but also social ones, which need to be addressed before they can fully complete their successful transition to civilian life.

For more information, please contact Federico Soda, IOM Sarajevo. Tel: 387.33.648 204
Email: fsoda@iom.int

ESTONIA - IOM Launches CT Research and Information Programme - The IOM Regional Office for the Baltic and Nordic States in Helsinki and IOM Tallinn are to launch a research and information project to collect and disseminate information about the trafficking in human beings to, from and through Estonia.

The 11-month US$60,000 project, which is funded by the US Embassy in Tallinn, will assess the extent of the problem, the major trafficking routes, countries and regions of origin and destination, methods of recruitment used by traffickers, and other relevant factors.

The research will include interviews with trafficking victims, local authorities and others who can provide information to better define the extent of the problem. The results of the research will be made public in order to raise awareness about the issue in Estonia.

As part of the project, IOM will establish a national roundtable bringing together Estonian government officials, NGOs and other grass- root actors to stimulate information sharing and the development of a national counter-trafficking (CT) action plan for Estonia.

Recent CT initiatives carried out by IOM's Helsinki-based Regional Office for the Baltic and Nordic States and IOM offices in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania include CT awareness-raising projects, capacity

building and training of officials on CT issues, provision of direct assistance to victims of trafficking in the Baltic States, a series of studies and publications on CT-related issues and a specialized database and website on NGOs dealing with victims of trafficking in the region.

For further information, please contact Elina Niedre, IOM Tallinn, Tel. +372 6116 366,
Email: elina.niedre@undp.riga.lv <mailto:elina.niedre@undp.riga.lv> or Elina Kostiainen, IOM Helsinki, Tel. +358 9 684 11 522,

Email: ekostiainen@iom.int

THAILAND - Cartoon Raises Youth Awareness of Human Trafficking - IOM Bangkok has released an animated film showing the plight of child trafficking victims, as part of a campaign to raise youth awareness of human trafficking.

The story is based on real-life human trafficking, and deals with issues such as gender, deception, forced labour, exploitation, exposure to HIV/Aids and stigmatization.

"Shattered Dreams" tells the story of Jan, 17, and Dao, 14, two sisters who thought of "Big Cities" like Bangkok as the promised land where dreams are fullfilled. Jan makes her journey to the city and for a time sends money back home.

This causes her younger sister and other village girls to believe they too can have a better life in the city, with well-paid jobs, modern clothes, brand-name products and shopping at big department stores.

It is only when Jhan returns home that everybody learns the truth - that her life had become a nightmare after being forced into prostitution.

The film will be shown to young people throughout the Greater Mekong sub-region including Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Laos, Vietnam and China. It is available in several languages, including Thai, Vietnamese, Khmer and Lao. Burmese and Shan are in production.

The video package, which will also be given to NGOs running public shelters for trafficking victims, will be accompanied by a training manual for social workers.

The package has already been shown to children trafficked to work in factories, currently being cared for at Thailand's Department of Social Development and Welfare shelter Ban Kredtrakarn in Nonthaburi province, prior to returning to their home countries.

Some 90% said that they were not aware of the situation depicted in the video and would not have come to Bangkok had they seen the video earlier.

GENEVA - Publications Catalogue 2003 - IOM's new publications catalogue based on a survey of all research by IOPM missions worldwide, is now available. It lists the full range of IOM's HQ and field publications - a total of more than 150 titles.

Two more IOM publications were published this week - The Migration-Development Nexus and Migracion Colombiana en Espana.