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Thailand: First Lady Laura Bush visits IOM refugee resettlement operations

US First Lady Laura Bush yesterday visited IOM's refugee resettlement operations at Mae La camp in Tak province on the Thai-Myanmar border.

The First Lady, who was accompanied by her daughter Barbara, saw IOM cultural orientation trainers preparing refugees for resettlement in the US and saw off eleven families leaving the camp with IOM en route to Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport and new lives in America.

IOM provides medical screening, cultural orientation and transport for Burmese refugees accepted for resettlement by the US and nine other resettlement countries.

Mae La, established in 1984, is the largest of nine closed border camps, accounting for some 35,000 of the 120,000 refugees living in the camps, which are run by the Thai Ministry of the Interior, supported by international NGOs.

In the first seven months of 2008, IOM moved over 4,000 mainly ethnic Karen refugees from Mae La to new lives in the US, with funding from the US State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM.). Nearly 700 more were resettled to Australia.

This year IOM has resettled over 12,200 refugees from eight of the nine, often remote and inaccessible Thai border camps. This follows some 15,000 departures in 2007 and 52,000 from Thailand since 2004.

While the most of the refugees have opted for resettlement in the US, other resettlement countries have included Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

For more information please contact Chris Lom at IOM Bangkok. Email: clom@iom.int. Tel. +66.819275215.