Water, food and health care are urgently needed for migrants fleeing the violence in Libya and arriving at the remote border village of Zouarké, close to Niger.
An IOM team sent to Zouarké last week with desperately needed supplies found access to water to be the most pressing issue as thousands of migrants transit through the village, a small cluster of about 20 huts with very limited services.
Although a group of 3,800 migrants reported to have been stranded at the village for some weeks had managed to leave of their own accord, IOM staff on the ground reported there were a total of 16 trucks present during the assessment in Zouarké with more than 1,200 migrants arriving in one go in a 24 hour period. These included women and children.
"The village is unable to cope with providing water from a 36m deep well for more than 500 migrants at any one time," said IOM's assessment team leader, Craig Murphy.
Even on a day when only 200 people were at the well, one migrant told IOM that he had queued for five hours to fill his jerry can; others said they had waited longer. The next day, after the arrival of another 700 migrants in the town, scuffles broke out by the well as emotions ran high in the wait for water.
With migrants typically staying three to four days to rest, recover from illness or to allow repair time for the trucks that will eventually carry them to Faya, tensions over access to water are mounting.
The IOM team found that a number of migrants arriving in Zouarké are sick, with no available medical services in the village. Some of the migrants have measles and are quarantined in the open under some trees just a few hundred metres from the rest of the migrant population, sleeping near the trucks.
The local prefect told IOM that authorities have recorded 15 migrant deaths since the outflow from Libya began with three people having died in Zouarké and the others either in Niger or en route to Faya.
The IOM team delivered 15 cartons of medical supplies including polio vaccination kits donated by the International Rescue Committee to enable a military nurse to begin treating the sick.
An IOM truck carrying food supplies including flour, rice, oil and sugar also arrived at the weekend. It will be used to start up a food assistance programme for migrants after their long, arduous and physically challenging journey on overloaded trucks from Gatroun and other towns in Libya.
With tens of thousands of Chadians still believed to be in Gatroun and elsewhere in southern Libya and expected to transit through Zouarké in the coming days and weeks, IOM will be establishing a way station in the village, a mid-way point in the journey from the southern Libyan city to Faya.
The way station will provide migrants fleeing Libya with food, water, shelter and basic health care.
It will complement IOM efforts to improve conditions for thousands of migrants travelling along this route prior to their arrival at Faya where they will be then evacuated by the Organization to different final destinations in Chad, including the capital N'Djamena.
More than 25,000 Chadians have made the long truck journey from Libya to Chad via Niger since the crisis began, forced to take this route to avoid landmines along the Aozou Strip that separates Libya from Chad.
For further information, please contact Jemini Pandya, IOM Geneva, Tel: + 41 22 717 9486/+ 41 79 217 3374, Email: jpandya@iom.int or Dr. Qasim Sufi, IOM Chad, Tel: + 235 62 900 674 Email: qsufi@iom.int