HAITI - IOM Provides Humanitarian Assistance to Victims of Hurricane Gustav - The IOM Mission in Haiti is working with Haitian authorities, UN agencies and local partners to provide emergency relief items to persons affected by Hurricane Gustav.
As part of the United Nations country team in Haiti, IOM will take the lead in providing shelter and non-food items in the capital Port au Prince and in Petit and Grand Goave, two of the hardest hit areas located some 70 kilometres west of the capital.
IOM Haiti has immediate access to 1,439 hygienic kits and 1,445 cotton sheets and is on standby to distribute these items as soon as possible.
Emergency shelter to persons made homeless by the hurricane is being provided in temporary collective centres set up in existing buildings. Some 70 per cent of these shelters are schools, 29 per cent are churches and the rest are located in community centres.
The six to twelve inches of rain fell over the island on Wednesday resulted in flooding and mudslides and strong rains continued into Thursday. According to the UN's Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), some 2,500 residents of Petit Goave are severely affected.
Rapid assessments carried out on Wednesday and Thursday by the local Risk and Disaster Committees (DPC), the Haitian Red Cross, international organizations and NGOs reported 6,299 persons already in public shelters, 107 homes destroyed and 212 damaged.
In Petit Goave, the Government reported three deaths, one person missing, 38 homes destroyed, dozens of homes damaged and flooded, and extensive damage to power lines. A group of 60 persons who were rescued from a capsized boat were immediately taken to a public shelter.
For more information, please contact Monique Van Hoof at IOM Port au Prince, Tel: +509 3702 38 47, Email: mvanhoof@iom.int
GEORGIA- Needs of Displaced Persons Remain Considerable Despite Some Returns - While organized and spontaneous returns of Internally Displaced Person (IDPs) from the Georgian capital Tbilisi to the central region of Gori have continued over the past few days, tens of thousands of vulnerable displaced persons continue to shelter in hundreds of grim collective centres where they remain in constant need of humanitarian assistance.
"We continue on a daily basis to distribute essential non-food assistance, targeting the most vulnerable displaced families," says IOM's Marc Hulst. "But the needs remain considerable and the challenge daunting, both logistically because the centres are so numerous and scattered but also because more families displaced from South Ossetia and conflict-affected areas are still arriving in the capital."
Over the past three days, IOM staff with the help of local volunteers has distributed more than a thousand families, child and baby kits containing mattresses, gas cookers, bed sheets, towels, soap, tooth paste, washing powder and basin, toilet paper, diapers and baby food to an additional 495 conflict- affected individuals.
IOM has also deployed additional staff in the western city of Kutaisi and in the Black Sea port of Batumi to further assess the needs of recently internally displaced families and to assist in the on-going distribution of basic humanitarian assistance.
"With the school year beginning in September and the on-coming winter, there is an urgent need to provide shelter and building materials to help displaced families move out of schools and kindergartens, which they currently occupy," says IOM's Marc Hulst.
IOM's humanitarian programme for Georgia has received US$ 100,000 from the Slovak government. The funding will provide non food and shelter assistance to vulnerable families who have been displaced from South Ossetia.
As part of the UN Flash Appeal, IOM required an initial US$ 1, 9 million to provide emergency logistical support, shelter and non-food assistance over the next six months to tens of thousands of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Tbilisi and in other parts of Georgia.
For more information, please contact Khatuna Didbaridze at IOM Georgia, Tel: + 995 32 25 22 16; Email: kdidbaridze@iom.ge
COSTA RICA - Identifying Human Traffickers and Their Victims - The IOM offices in Costa Rica and Nicaragua are joining forces with the National Coalition Against Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling of Costa Rica and Nicaragua's National Committee Against Human Trafficking to bring awareness and training to public officials, including police and immigration, NGO staff and other relevant stakeholders on identifying trafficking networks and providing assistance to victims in border areas.
The gathering, taking place today in the border town of Los Chiles, Costa Rica, complements one held earlier this week in the Nicaraguan town of Peñas Blancas aimed at raising awareness on the needs of victims of trafficking who are taken across land borders and are not identified as such by border guards.
"Often, the first person a victim of trafficking comes into contact with is a border guard. A properly trained official will be able to identify a victim of trafficking and provide initial assistance on the spot," explains Ana Hidalgo, a psychologist working with IOM's Counter Trafficking Unit in San Jose.
According to IOM studies carried out in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, as well as in border areas in Central America, there is a significant movement of people who may be potential victims of trafficking.
IOM studies have also confirmed that Costa Rica is country of origin, transit and destination for human trafficking, and that adult women are most affected and at risk of being trafficked inside the country and abroad. Women, as well as minors, are trafficked inside Costa Rica to feed the ever-growing demand for sexual exploitation, which includes sex tourism.
Information provided by Central American Council of Women Ministries (COMMCA) also confirms that women victims of trafficking are brought into Costa Rica from Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Peru for sexual exploitation, forced labour to work in the maquilas (assembly plants), and for domestic work.
Over the past year, IOM Nicaragua has provided return and reintegration assistance to 30 young Nicaraguan women who had been trafficked to El Salvador and Costa Rica and other countries for sexual exploitation. Ten have successfully completed vocational training and are now employed; another nine are still undergoing training.
"Building the capacity of local officials to detect and react to human trafficking and to work with national, regional, and international law enforcement agencies is fundamental in the fight against trafficking," adds Hidalgo.
For more information, please contact Agueda Marín at IOM San Jose; Tel. +506.22.21.5348, ext. 119, Email: amarin@iom.int or Ana Beatriz Fernández, Tel: +506.22.21.5348, ext. 136, Emal: afernandez@iom.int
ECUADOR - Passport Issuance System Receives New Support - The IOM Mission in Ecuador and the Canadian Commercial Corporation this week signed an amendment to their existing cooperation agreement on the Modernization of the Ecuadorian Passport Issuance System.
The amendment guarantees financial support for the passport emission services to continue until 2010; the update of the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure; an expansion of the service to include 16 new consulates and two new provinces in Ecuador; and the establishment of a technical support call centre.
The IOM-managed project has provided the Government of Ecuador with state-of-the-art equipment to issue reliable and secure machine-readable travel documents (MRTD). The project's main objective is to provide MRTDs to Ecuadorians through a system that guarantees compliance with security and quality standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
"Before 2002, when IOM began this programme, passports were done manually, did not comply with international security standards and were easy to forge. Furthermore, there was no database to keep information. The lack of modern technology made the process long-drawn- out; with people waiting for hours in long lines," explains Alejandro Guidi, IOM Chief of Mission in Ecuador.
The new system, which includes 23 security mechanisms incorporated into the machine-readable document, has reduced the issuance process to an average of 20 minutes, and created a database that can be accessed by Ecuadorian consulates worldwide.
The new phase of the project will also provide training for the staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ensure the security of the data collected. Some 350,000 new passports are processed every year in Ecuador.
Officials from Australia, Bolivia, Colombia, Kenya, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uganda have visited Ecuador to look into the passport issuance process.
For more information, please contact Ana Guzman at IOM Ecuador, Tel: + 593.2.225.3948; Email: aguzman@iom.int or Cesar Perez at +593.2.290-8027 Email: cperez@iom.int
FINLAND-Cultural Orientation Programme for Refugees Wins New Support - Congolese and Iraqi refugees bound for resettlement to Finland will benefit from IOM's pre-departure cultural orientation classes thanks to new funding from the Finnish Government.
The five-month programme will provide 156 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo and 300 Iraqi refugees with the necessary knowledge and skills to help them adjust to their new lives in Finland.
"IOM's cultural orientation classes aim to minimize the culture shock that most refugees experience when they arrive in a resettlement country," says IOM's cultural orientation officer Raqib Wahabzadara. "The classes are an essential part of efforts deployed by IOM and its partners to empower refugees to ensure their integration process is a success."
The three-day cultural orientation classes, which will be carried out as of September in English and in local languages in Rwanda (or Kenya please confirm) and Syria, will provide refugees with factual information on daily life in Finland and practical guidance on how to find accommodation, employment, and access health care and education.
Since 2001, IOM Helsinki's multicultural training team has been organizing cultural orientation classes for a total of 1,954 refugees in Cambodia, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Rwanda, Thailand, and Turkey.
Finland was the first country in Europe to set up cultural orientation training prior to the resettlement of refugees. Finland resettles 750 refugees every year, and accepts, on average, another 200 persons within the framework of family reunification.
For more information, please contact Raqib Wahabzada at IOM Helsinki, Tel: +358 9 684 11 527, Email: rwahabzada@iom.int
