THAILAND - First Lady Laura Bush Visits IOM Refugee Resettlement Operations - US First Lady Laura Bush yesterday visited IOM's refugee resettlement operations at Mae La camp in Tak province on the Thai-Myanmar border.
The First Lady, who was accompanied by her daughter Barbara, saw IOM cultural orientation trainers preparing refugees for resettlement in the US and saw off eleven families leaving the camp with IOM en route to Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport and new lives in America.
IOM provides medical screening, cultural orientation and transport for Burmese refugees accepted for resettlement by the US and nine other resettlement countries.
Mae La, established in 1984, is the largest of nine closed border camps, accounting for some 35,000 of the 120,000 refugees living in the camps, which are run by the Thai Ministry of the Interior, supported by international NGOs.
In the first seven months of 2008, IOM moved over 4,000 mainly ethnic Karen refugees from Mae La to new lives in the US, with funding from the US State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM.). Nearly 700 more were resettled to Australia.
This year IOM has resettled over 12,200 refugees from eight of the nine, often remote and inaccessible Thai border camps. This follows some 15,000 departures in 2007 and 52,000 from Thailand since 2004.
While the most of the refugees have opted for resettlement in the US, other resettlement countries have included Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
For more information please contact Chris Lom at IOM Bangkok. Email: clom@iom.int Tel. +66.819275215
MEXICO - Call to Include Migrants in HIV/AIDS Responses at AIDS Conference - As the XVII International AIDS Conference wraps up in Mexico City today, IOM's Deputy Director General Ndioro Ndiaye has appealed to governments to include migrants in their HIV/AIDS programming and responses.
She highlighted the increased vulnerability of migrants to HIV infection to journalists attending the conference.
Her comments came as a study on various migrant communities carried out by IOM and the Italian Ministry for Labour, Health and Social Policies and presented at the conference, found that single male migrants newly arriving in Italy with little knowledge of Italian and a low level of education, were most at risk of contracting HIV.
Lack of awareness and high-risk behaviour is largely behind the findings of the study which also identified other at-risk groups including young, second-generation immigrants struggling to integrate.
The study was carried out when it was discovered that 70 per cent of the people in Italy who realize they are HIV positive only when diagnosed with AIDS, are immigrants.
Addressing HIV-related travel restrictions implemented in nearly 70 countries around the world, IOM's HIV focal point, Dr. Islene Araujo said it was time to revise national migration laws on the issue. "These restrictions were created in the 1980's when the AIDS epidemic was not well understood. Today, there is no public health evidence that supports these restrictions."
IOM, which is part of an international task force on HIV-related travel restrictions, engages in constructive dialogue with governments who maintain such restrictions to find more effective ways to address the relationship between migration and HIV.
"Travel restrictions marginalize HIV positive migrants even more by pushing this population further underground and away from life-saving treatment, care and support," says IOM's Director of Health, Dr. Davide Mosca.
During the conference which began last weekend, IOM, ILO and UNAIDS presented a joint policy brief on HIV and international labour migration focusing on HIV-related rights and needs of international labour migrants irrespective of their legal status and whether their stay in the destination country is short or long term.
The policy brief recommends specific actions to be carried out by each actor in the migration process in order to effectively address the HIV-related risks encountered by mobile populations, including poverty, gender inequality and human rights violations.
For further information, please contact Jorge Gallo, Email: jgallo@iom.int Tel. +57.311.561.9495
USA - Colombian Government and Private Sector Engage the Colombian Diaspora - Hundreds of members of the Colombian diaspora in the United States are this week meeting with Colombian government officials, civil society organizations and the private sector to discuss ways to ensure the interests and needs of the diaspora are included in the country's migration policy.
The Colombia Nos Une Programme (Colombia Unites Us), sponsored by the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and IOM, is sponsoring the three-day Fourth Annual International Seminar on Colombian Migration taking place this week in New York City.
Colombia's 2005 census reported 3.3 million Colombians - ten per cent of the total population - as living abroad with the largest diaspora communities in Spain (35.4 per cent), the United States (23.3 per cent) and Venezuela (18.5 per cent). Last year, Colombians remitted US$4.2 billion, according to the Inter American Development Bank.
The strength in numbers, skills and remittances of the Colombian diaspora and its willingness to engage in the development of its country of origin, prompted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to put in place the Colombia Nos Une initiative, with support from the IOM Mission in Colombia.
The internet site www.RedEsColombia.org was created to bring together Colombians from around the world to exchange lessons learnt and stay engaged and committed with their country of origin.
"The international experience and skills gained by Colombians abroad provides Colombia Nos Une with positive contributions to the country's migration and development agenda to the benefit of all Colombians. These discussions also provide vital input for the government when responding to migration challenges," explains José Angel Oropeza, IOM Chief of Mission in Colombia.
This week's discussions are focusing on addressing demands in the health sector as well as on pension schemes, issues highlighted by the Colombian diaspora as important concerns. Education, housing, savings schemes, income generation, cultural projects as well as exploring avenues for legal and safe migration are other issues being discussed.
For more information please contact Juliana Quintero, IOM Colombia; Tel: +57.1.5946410 ext. 133; email jquintero@iom.int
