IOM introduces new 'bribe' for refugees to return home

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has launched a new programme called 'Return and Rebuild', providing extra 'support' for refugees returning to war-torn Afghanistan and Iraq under its so-called Voluntary Return and Reintegration Programme (VARRP).

Afghani and Iraqi asylum seekers who are 'voluntarily' returning home between 1 September 2008, and 31 August 2009, can now receive, in addition to the 'reintegration assistance' they would normally receive under VARRP, up to £2,000-worth of 'support' for building materials to assist in the reconstruction or repair of their houses back home.

The IOM was founded in 1951, under the leadership of the USA, mainly with the intention of creating a counter-agency to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). But unlike the latter, IOM does not have a Protection Mandate for its work with refugees and displaced persons. From the beginning, the intergovernmental agency has not been based on humanitarian principles but on economic considerations. With 125 member states and a further 16 states with observer status, IOM today has offices in over 100 countries.

As well as serving as a 'migration warning system' for Western governments, IOM provides governments and other agencies, through its Technical Cooperation on Migration division, with technical, intellectual and strategic tools to "enhance their migration management capacities."

Campaigners argue that IOM's real role is to help Western governments 'meet their deportation quotas' wherever deporting unwanted migrants is too costly, difficult or where they want to avoid their human rights obligations under international law. In the nine years since it started to operate in the UK in 1999, IOM has 'assisted' more than 27,000 people to 'return' to some 130 countries from the UK.