Tuesday 19 August 2003

Press Briefing Notes
Tuesday 19 August 2003
Spokesperson: Jean-Philippe Chauzy

LIBERIA - IOM Starts Registering Third Country Nationals
KOSOVO - IOM-EAS Merging with the Department of Labour and Employment -


LIBERIA - IOM Starts Registering Third Country Nationals - Working with the ICRC, the Liberian Red Cross and MSF, IOM has started registering Third
Country Nationals (TCNs) from Cote d'Ivoire who have found refuge in schools and churches in the Firestone Plantation, Africa's largest rubber plantation located near Roberts International Airport, some 50 km east of Monrovia.

This site currently shelters tens of thousands of IDPs and TCNs who fled recent fighting in the port city of Buchanan, Liberia's second most populated city located 120 km southeast of Monrovia.

This registration exercise is also carried out in co-ordination with personnel from the Ivorian embassy in Monrovia and with the protection of a Nigerian contingent of the West African peacekeeping force, ECOMIL.

So far, IOM has registered 93 nationals from Cote d'Ivoire who had found refugee in and around the Ivorian embassy compound in Monrovia. Several hundred more are expected to register with IOM in the coming days to benefit from voluntary repatriation assistance by sea from Monrovia to Abidjan.

"Most of the displaced Third Country Nationals are still to be found in rebel occupied territory, such as in Zwedru, Grand Geddeh County or in Saclapea, Nimba County where access remains a major problem," says IOM's Andrew Choga. "Most Ivorian nationals who have so far been registered by IOM say they want to return home. Most have lost all of their belongings and have nothing to stay for. We are now in the process of identifying a ship that can take them back to Abidjan."

On 27 May, an IOM chartered ship, the MV Sandra, sailed out of Monrovia with 334 TCNs from Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina-Faso, Mali, Guinea and Togo. IOM staff provided registration, medical screening and pre-embarkation assistance.

The MV Sandra had earlier been earmarked by IOM to repatriate more than 1,000 TCNs who had been registered in Harper before the town fell to rebels from the Movement for Democracy in Liberia group.

In neighbouring Côte D'Ivoire, IOM continues to evacuate close to 1,000 TCNs per week, mostly nationals from Burkina Faso from the towns of Duekoué and Guiglo.

The situation in western Côte d'Ivoire remains tense as resentment amongst the local population against migrant workers from the sub-region remains high.

To date, 6,159 TCNs have been evacuated from Guiglo, Duekoué, Tabou and Abidjan mostly to Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea and Ghana.

KOSOVO - IOM-EAS Merging with the Department of Labour and Employment - The IOM programme providing employment assistance to Kosovars is merging with Kosovo's Department of Labour.

The merge between the IOM Employment Assistance Services (EAS) and the Regional Employment Offices of the Department of Labour will further support employment and labour market development in Kosovo by assisting the employment offices enhance their capacities to promote fair employment practices and quality services for the unemployed and employers.

The IOM-EAS is combining its staff and resources with that of the department's regional employment offices in order to complement their services through increased outreach to employers, training for the unemployed, business consultancy, and employment matching.

The IOM EAS programme has provided job counselling, business start-up and consultancy, capacity building training in business and job preparation, job search, credit referral, on the job training, and referral for vocational training.

Since the IOM programme began in October 2001, it has assisted over 17,000 former KLA combatants, 130 retrenched railway workers, minority families who returned from Switzerland (Roma, Ashkali, Egyptians and Bosniaks), Serbs living in the Gjilan and Prishtina regions, individuals who returned from the UK, and over 300 persons from the general population. In addition, over 6,000 persons have received training.

IOM has received funding support for its EAS programme from the United States, the United Kingdom, DFID, Japan, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland and UNMIK.