Evacuations of third country nationals picks up

The evacuation of some 776 third country nationals from western Cote d'Ivoire picked up at the weekend with road convoys leaving the southwestern town of Tabou on Saturday and the western towns of Duekoue/Guiglo on Sunday.

The convoy from Tabou repatriated 500 Burkina Faso nationals via Ghana. The Duekoue convoy transported 276 Ghanaians, 18 Nigerians and four Togolese, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement on Friday.

An IOM-chartered ship, the MV Sandra, was scheduled to arrive at the port of San Pedro, east of Tabou, to evacuate another 350 Guinean nationals to Conakry.

The returnees are mostly families who fled fighting in eastern Liberia or who were employed on cocoa and coffee plantations in western Cote d'Ivoire, IOM said. Most of them, it added, were desperate to return home.

Conditions in western Cote d'Ivoire were reportedly deteriorating with the arrival over the past two months of up to 30,000 Liberian refugees fleeing fighting on the Liberian side of the border, IOM noted.

Food prices were spiraling and the public health situation was reportedly deteriorating with growing incidences of malaria and water-borne diseases.

A further 8,500 Burkina Faso nationals were expected to return home with bi-weekly IOM road convoys from Guiglo over the next two months.

"Third country nationals" is a term used by humanitarian agencies in Cote d'Ivoire to refer to West African and other nationals who are not part of Cote d'Ivoire's traditional refugee community, which is made up of Liberians and Sierra Leoneans.

Meanwhile, the Swedish government last week contributed an equivalent of about US $249,000 to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for a peace monitoring force in Cote d'Ivoire.

A statement from the Swedish Foreign Affairs ministry said since the crisis in the country began, Sweden and the European Union had expressed strong support for ECOWAS' efforts to stabilise the situation in the country.

"ECOWAS' military presence is an important precondition for the implementation of the peace agreement of January this year," the statement said. "The contribution to the ECOWAS force is in line with Sweden's objective of strengthening African capability to prevent and manage crisis," it added.