Friday 21 November 2003

Press Briefing Notes
Friday 21 November 2003
Spokesperson: Jean Philippe Chauzy

1. SRI LANKA - Information Campaign on Irregular Migration
2. LITHUANIA - Baltic Training in Treatment of Trafficking Victims
3. AFGHANISTAN - IOM Rebuilds Afghan Post Offices

SRI LANKA - Information Campaign on Irregular Migration - IOM Colombo has launched a six-week information campaign aimed at helping to prevent and reduce irregular migration through and from Sri Lanka. The campaign seeks to raise awareness about legal options for migration and the risks and dangers of irregular migration.


According to the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment there are currently some 970,000 Sri Lankans legally working abroad and the numbers are growing. Some 203,710 left in 2002; 184,000 in 2001, and 182,188 in 2000.

In 2002, the top five destinations were: Saudi Arabia (35%), Kuwait (20.54%), UAE (16.14%), Qatar (10.18%) and Lebanon (6.23%). Women outnumbered men, accounting for 65% of the total, with some 80% of them going to unskilled domestic jobs.

But despite the legal options for labour migration, thousands of Sri Lankans look to people smugglers to help them emigrate to find work abroad, mainly in Europe, and many fall into the hands of human traffickers.

Sri Lanka, which does not require visas for nationals from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, has also become a transit country for irregular migration. Many irregular migrants, notably from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, use the country as a stepping stone to travel on to destinations including Europe and Australia.

The main message of the information campaign, which is in English, Sinhala and Tamil, and is funded by the European Commission, is 'Don't Put Yourself at Risk.' It urges people to inform themselves when considering migration and invites them, when in doubt, to call an IOM hotline, where they can get objective and credible information.

The campaign includes public service announcements broadcast on radio, newspaper ads, posters, billboards, leaflets and brochures. IOM Colombo will also be holding two workshops on migration for government and NGO representatives.

The information campaign follows an IOM handover earlier this month of nearly US$50,000 worth of training and IT equipment and software, also paid for by the European Commission, to the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE). The training equipment will be installed in 23 training centres across the country to upgrade the quality of training provided to out-going unskilled female migrant workers. The IT equipment and software will be used to upgrade the SLBFE's information systems.


For further information, please contact Shantha Kulasekara, Email: shantha@iomsrilanka.org, or Tommy Gelbman, Email: tgelbman@iomsrilanka.org. Tel: +94 11 536.1941.

LITHUANIA - Baltic Training in Treatment of Trafficking Victims - IOM has started a series of training seminars in the Baltic States to help social workers and police officers work with victims of human trafficking.

The project, funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), plans to train about 100 Lithuanian social workers employed by the state, municipalities and NGOs in the coming months. A further 60 social workers will be trained in Latvia and 40 in Estonia. Training for a similar number of police officers in all three countries will begin in December.

This week IOM Vilnius hosted the first group of social workers. Using a methodology developed with Vilnius University Social Work Department and social work practitioners, the programme draws on the experiences of the 41 trafficking victims assisted by IOM's Baltic offices in 2002 / 2003.

Training for the Lithuanian police, developed in cooperation with Lithuanian Police Training Center and experts in organized crime, will begin in December, using a different methodology. It aims to sensitize officers in the field to human trafficking, to enable them to better work both with victims and with NGOs providing protection and support.

AFGHANISTAN - IOM Rebuilds Afghan Post Offices - IOM's US-funded Afghanistan Transition Initiative (ATI) has started to rehabilitate six key Post, Telephone and Telegraph (PTT) offices in four Afghan provinces.

After decades of fractional fighting and neglect, Afghanistan's telecommunications system is in an advanced state of decay and the six PTT centres were selected by the Afghan Ministry of Post and Telecommunications.

ATI-funded reconstruction work on two Kabul sub-post offices - Khir Khana and Shar-e-Naw - is now complete and renovation of Kabul's main post office is expected to be completed in December.

The post offices administer 1,600 analogue and 1,600 digital telephone lines. The analogue lines can be used for telephone calls within the city and the digital lines provide national and international connections.

Other post offices under reconstruction with ATI grants are located in Charikar in Parwan province, Bamyan, and Asadabad in Kunar province.

The ATI programme funds community-based infrastructure projects. Since the start of the programme in March 2002, it has made 340 small grants totalling US$ 15.8 million in 30 of Afghanistan's 32 provinces.