Tuesday 26 August 2003

Press Briefing Notes
Tuesday 26 August 2003
Spokesperson: Jean Philippe Chauzy

1. RWANDA - IOM Assists EU Observation Mission to Elections
2. GHANA- Trafficked Children Freed
3. EGYPT - Cairo Arab Migration Conference

RWANDA - IOM Assists EU Observation Mission to Elections - IOM teams in Brussels and Kigali are working closely with the EU Observation Mission, which is currently monitoring Rwanda's first presidential elections since the 1994 genocide.

An IOM team in the Rwandan capital Kigali helped in the deployment of 12 long term observers and 40 short term observers, who are currently observing the presidential elections (i.e. the pre-electoral campaign, vote and count) and will later monitor parliamentary elections scheduled for 30 September.

In Kigali, IOM set up and equipped the EU EOM office and media monitoring office and has selected and recruited local support staff to assist the Mission throughout its deployment. IOM ensures provision and maintenance of all the IT, communication, office and other equipment required, including vehicles, laptop computers, printers, satellite phones, medical kits and other items. IOM also helped to set up the EU EOM Rwanda website, to ensure the Mission's visibility (www.ueobsrwa.org.rw).

The first phase of the EU EOM mission in Rwanda was completed in April-June 2003. It was aimed at observing the information campaign and voting for the Referendum on the new Constitution, which took place on 26 May.

This programme is implemented under the umbrella of the European Initiative for Democratization and Human Rights (EIDHR). EU election observation missions are part of the developing mandate of the EU focusing on the protection and promotion of human rights, and support for democratization.

For additional information, please contact Sanja Celebic. Tel. + 32 2 282 45 76. Email: scelebic@iom.int, or Maïlis Orban. Tel. +32 2 282 45 82. Email: morban@iom.int.

GHANA- Trafficked Children Freed - A first group of 173 children who had been trafficked for forced labour in fishing communities at Yeji in the Atebubu district of the Brong Ahafo region will be reunited with their parents in the next two weeks in the Volta, Central and Greater Accra regions.

The children, who had been sold by their impoverished parents to local fishermen for up to 1.5 million Cedis (US$180), are staying at the IOM transit centre in the town of Yeji and are being given medical examinations before completing the final lap of their journey home.

They are part of a larger group of 1,002 children due to be released by their former employers. In return, the fishermen will receive training, modern fishing equipment and micro credits to help them improve their fishing techniques or engage in other income generating activities.

"Interestingly, most of the fishermen who have accepted to release the children have decided to give up fishing on Lake Volta and to engage in other activities, such as cattle and pig rearing," says IOM's Programme Coordinator Ernest Taylor. "IOM has provided them with training and helped them through the purchase of livestock and essential equipment."

Prior to the release of the children, IOM also identified the needs of parents to help them undertake income-generating micro-projects through the provision of training and micro-credits. The parents have received business training and loans to start or expand small businesses ranging from selling foodstuffs and textiles, through charcoal production and vending, to the setting up of small restaurants known as "Chop-Bars." Family reunification will be consolidated through activities aimed at allowing children to return to school or join vocational training programmes.

To reunite the children with their parents, IOM organized parents' identification sessions during which photographs of the fishing-boys were spread out face up. Parents would then pick out photograph(s) of their children, mentioning the name and the age of the child. The information provided by the parents was then cross- checked with bio-data compiled by IOM provided by the employers.

IOM has registered a total of 1,002 school-aged children who have been trafficked for slave labour in fishing communities in the Volta and Central regions of Ghana. They are mostly boys aged between 3 and 14 forced to work in the fishing industry. They begin at dawn and work until late afternoon casting and drawing nets. They are poorly fed and never paid. Sometimes the nets get stuck at the bottom of the lake and the children have to dive to release them. Many have drowned.

According to IOM Dr. Ernest Taylor, local traditional leaders helped him and his team win the cooperation of the fishermen, locally known as "slave masters". The Ghanaian authorities, the ILO and Apple, a local NGO, cooperate in the implementation of the US-funded IOM programme.

Child trafficking in Ghanaian society is only partially explained by poverty. Traditionally it has been a common practice for poor parents to hand over their children to be looked after by relatives and friends. Traffickers are now exploiting this age-old tradition resulting in parents inadvertently but effectively selling their children. There are currently no laws against human trafficking in Ghana.

For more information, please call Dr Ernest Taylor, IOM Accra, Tel: 00.233.20.8190.719.

EGYPT - Cairo Arab Migration Conference - IOM and the League of Arab States will host a major conference in Cairo next week addressing "Arab Migration in a Globalized World."

Over 250 experts are expected to attend the conference, which will run from Tuesday through Thursday at the Cairo headquarters of the League of Arab States.

Egyptian Manpower and Emigration Minister Ahmed Al Amawy, IOM Director General Brunson McKinley and League of Arab States Secretary General Amr Moussa will open the conference.

Other speakers will include ministers holding labour, social affairs and migration portfolios from Morocco, Algeria, Bahrain and Palestine, as well as distinguished academics from the Arab world, Europe and the US.

Topics under discussion will include the impact of globalization on Arab migration trends, migration trends in the Mashreq, Maghreb and Gulf regions, human resource management in the Arab world and the role of diasporas - particularly from Palestine and Lebanon.

Abstracts of the conference papers can be found on the IOM website at www.iom.int.