IOM fully supports the on-going efforts to disseminate up-to-date information on the earthquake and emergency reliefs to a variety of migrant communities living in Japan.
There are various multilingual news services in Japan including those provided by public broadcaster NHK and commercial networks such as Wai Wai FM, which are available in Bahasa Indonesian, Bengali, Chinese, English, Filipino, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, Urdu, Thai and Vietnamese. These news services aim to fill an information gap for non-Japanese speaking migrants by disseminating vital information on where to access shelter, food and medical assistance.
"The Japanese media, national and local governments, NGOs are doing an extraordinary job providing the latest available information to the population. IOM is in support of further efforts to reach out to the various groups of migrants who are not fluent in Japanese," says Akio Nakayama, IOM's Senior Regional Adviser for Asia.
Multilingual information services are posted on the IOM Japan mission website at:
http://www.iomjapan.org/news/press_237.cfm
According to the Ministry of Justice, 2.18 million foreign nationals were registered as living in Japan in 2009. This includes Chinese, Korean and Japanese descendants from Brazil, Peru, and Asian countries, some of whom also reside in the areas most affected by the earthquake and tsunami.
There are growing concerns over the many and particular challenges that migrants in these areas are facing due to language barriers including lack of access to critical information, loss of documents and property as well as difficulties in regaining contact with families back home.
This outreach effort is funded through IOM's modest Emergency Preparedness Account (EPA), which allows IOM to carry immediate emergency assessment and operations prior to the receipt of donor funding.
For more information, please call Jean-Philippe Chauzy, IOM Geneva, Tel: +41 22 717 93 61/+41 79 285 43 66 or email: jpchauzy@iom.int