Palestinian ministry officials will participate in EU-funded migration workshop in Tunisia – EU press release/Non-UN document

PRESS RELEASE

PPRD South workshop addresses management of migration crises in the Mediterranean

Mr Mohammed ABUJAMEE and Mr Mahmoud ISSA respectively from the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Palestinian Civil Defence will gather with 25 civil protection officers from 11 Mediterranean countries to meet in Tunis on 16 – 17 July 2012 with international experts from the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, the United Nations High Commissary for Refugees (UN HCR), the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) and the International Organization for Migrations (IOM) to examine possible scenarios of forced migration crises in the Mediterranean and to discuss how the national civil protection authorities of the region could better collaborate among them and with international humanitarian actors in tackling these crisis.

The workshop, organized by the EU-funded PPRD South Programme, will be opened by Chokry Ben Jannet, Director General of the Tunisian National Office of Civil Protection, Françoise Millecam, Head of Operations at the EU Delegation to Tunisia and Pierluigi Soddu, PPRD South Executive Director.

A recent IOM workshop recognized that unexpected large scale migratory movements caused by conflicts, natural or technological disasters and environmental changes are a growing challenge for States, societies and international organizations. “Crisis and displacement have always happened – the IOM stated – and the main drivers have largely remained the same. However, the scale of disasters, their propensity to create larger population movements, and the complexity of these movements mark important new challenges for existing response mechanisms” .

In the first day of the workshop, the Tunisian Civil Protection will illustrate the lessons learned from the management of the humanitarian crisis caused by the massive flow of refugees seeking shelter and protection from the conflict in Libya in 2011. The arrival of more than 350.000 refugees demanding shelter, water and food, medical treatments, repatriation assistance or a new homeland, posed unprecedented challenges to the Tunisian civil protection system.

During the following discussions, workshop participants will try to set out specific roles for the different national and international agencies involved in delivering assistance and providing protection to the population affected by a migration crisis and will examine possible organizational measures for improving coordination among national and international players. In the second day of the event, operational aspects of migration crisis management will be addressed, such as tools and best practices for planning temporary shelters, camp management and minimum standards of assistance.

According to UNHCR, in recent years there has been an escalation in the number of refugees and people displaced within their country by events such as war and natural disasters. The UNHCR’s 2010 report estimated that there were a global total of 15.4 million refugees, 27.5 million internally displaced people and a further 840,000 people waiting to be given refugee status. More than half of the total were children.

The PPRD South (2009-2012) is a Programme financed by the European Union with 5 million Euros and it supports international cooperation for the reinforcement of Civil Protection capacities between the European Union, the Mediterranean and Balkan Partner Countries. The forthcoming workshop will build on the results of a national seminar held in Tunis on November 2011 on “The role of Civil Protection in the disaster management system: Lessons learnt from the Refugees Management Crisis” .The main results of this workshop will be published on the Programme web portal www.euromedcp.eu.

For more information, please contact: Alessandro Candeloro, +39 349 0850931, info@euromedcp.eu A project implemented by the contractor

Via Ulpiano, 11 – c/o Italian

Civile Protection Dpt. –

00193 – Italy

Tel: +39 06 6820 2674 –

Fax: +39 06 6820 2811 –

www.euromedcp.eu