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Burkina Faso government on Friday gave a greelight to a proposal by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to open a local office in the capital, Ouagadougou, the delegate minister to regional cooperation Jean De Dieu Somda told journalists on Friday.
"For more efficiency and more proximity, IOM has decided to set up a local agency," the minister said. "It's on the basis of its achievements and its intrinsic missions that Burkina Faso government concluded it deserves to have an office in
Ouagadougou," he added.
A communique issued earlier Friday after a cabinet meeting, the Burkina Faso government said it had given its agreement to IOM's proposal to establish an office in the country.
IOM whose regional office is in Dakar, Senegal, has already helped repatriate some 450 Burkina nationals fleeing violence in Cote d'Ivoire who were stranded in southern Guinea's Kankan and Nzerekore.
According to Somda, IOM has been asked to assist in repatriating some "groups" of nationals stranded in Liberia and in parts of Guinea. He, however gave no numbers. Some 100,000 have returend home so far the minister said. Some through the voluntary return program "Bayiri" but most of them on their own.
The IOM, set up in 1951 by Belgium and the United
States governments to assist migrants and help in their reinsertion to their communities.
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