Council of Europe

European Commission Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO) Director General Claus Sorensen this week met with internally displaced Malians identified by IOM’s ECHO-funded project to track displacement in the conflict-affected West African nation.

Thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) are still living in protracted displacement in Mali following the occupation of the northern part of the country by Islamist rebels in early 2012 and the subsequent military intervention led by Malian and French troops.

The Commission on Population Movements (CMP), a national IDP monitoring body led by IOM, estimates that the conflict has displaced over 282,000 people across Mali since March 2012. […]

IOM and the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) have concluded an agreement on cooperation in matters of common interest. A formal agreement was signed today in Geneva, Switzerland, by IOM Director General William Lacy Swing and ICMP Director General Kathryne Bomberger. According to the agreement, the main areas of cooperation between the two international organizations will be to address the issue of missing persons from migration, displacement, human trafficking, and other causes. IOM and ICMP will also cooperate in conducting research studies on matters of mutual interest and other areas.

While ICMP estimates that millions of persons are missing as a consequence of armed conflict and violations of human rights, there are no precise numbers regarding how many persons are missing from migration, displacement and organized violence, including human trafficking and drug related violence. […]

In today’s increasingly mobile and interconnected world, migration has become an integral part of the lives of over 100 million women. At different stages of their lives, a growing proportion of these women leave their familiar surroundings to study, work, marry, reunite with their families or flee a dangerous situation. “For many women and girls, migration is a way to fulfil their potential, to develop and to exercise their human rights. But being both a migrant and female also exposes them to risk – the risk of being subjected to violence”, says Ambassador William Lacy Swing, Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Women migrants predominantly work in the informal sector – often in unregulated professions such as domestic work, agriculture or services – which makes them particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. The majority of victims of human trafficking are also women and girls. In addition, women tend to be over-represented among the 27.5 million internally displaced people (IDPs) globally, and research indicates that in situations of crisis and forced displacement, the break-down of family and social structures exposes them to acute risks of physical and sexual violence. […]

Three years after Haiti’s catastrophic 2010 earthquake, some 87,750 families are still living in 450 makeshift, insanitary and often dangerous camps scattered throughout the country. The European Commission Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO) has now stepped in with a new EUR 6 million contribution to an IOM programme which supports the relocation of camp residents to safer housing options through the provision of rental subsidies.

The new ECHO funding will allow IOM to extend the programme until December 2013 targeting at least 7,560 families in some 50 of the highest risk camps in terms of poor sanitation, flooding and landslides. A total of some 36,500 families or 146,000 individuals are expected to have received rental subsidies by the end of 2013. This will reduce the total number of individuals in camps to approximately 50,250 families or 201,000 individuals. […]

IOM’s efforts to provide support to vulnerable Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and their host communities in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu and in the Southern border regions of Lower Juba and Gedo have received new backing from the Government of France. The year-long EUR 1 million programme aims to make a quick and visible impact on the lives of thousands of vulnerable IDPs, other mobile populations and host communities, through the direct provision of basic services in Mogadishu and in border areas of Kenya and Ethiopia. […]