The number of vulnerable stranded migrants with immediate financial, health and protection needs requesting help from IOM Egypt, including assisted voluntary return to their country of origin, has spiked in 2016.
“This has created longer waiting times and reduced the range of services that we can provide for vulnerable migrants and their families. Increasingly we are being forced to resort to crisis management, rather than offering sustainable and durable solutions to these people,” said Andrea Dabizzi, who heads IOM Egypt’s migrant assistance programme. “We are asking key partners and donors to provide more support to our programmes to meet current needs,” he added.
Migration levels have reached new highs in the Mediterranean region in 2015 – 2016. Forced displacement of people, political instability across the Middle East and North Africa, and economic and environmental pressures have caused a mass movement of people. Many lives have been lost as a result of perilous journeys.
Dabizzi noted that without IOM support, migrants in Egypt can find themselves in an increasingly precarious situation, with little to no prospect of settling in the country or returning home. This creates a push factor for increasing onward migration to Europe.
Egypt is an origin, transit and destination country for mixed migration. Since 2011, IOM Egypt has been partnering the government to respond to these complex migration flows. It has also launched direct assistance programmes, which have helped to meet the immediate financial, health and protection needs of over 4,500 vulnerable stranded migrants since 2013. Since 2011 it has also helped over 2,000 migrants to voluntarily return to their countries of origin.
