A group of 101 Palestinian refugees who remained stranded for many years in an overcrowded makeshift camp in the Iraqi desert, will receive temporary shelter in Slovakia, following an agreement between the Slovak Government, UNHCR and IOM.

The Palestinian refugees will be housed in an asylum facility in the eastern city of Humenne while their applications for resettlement to third countries are processed. IOM will provide medical assessment and cultural orientation classes to prepare them to meet the challenges and opportunities of daily life in resettlement countries.

IOM and UNHCR will accompany the group from Al Waleed camp to the Jordanian border, and then onwards to Amman’s Marka airport, where they will board an IOM-chartered flight for Kosice, Slovakia.

“Because of the inhuman conditions to which the refugees are currently exposed in the Al Waleed camp, the Slovak Government is humanitarian initiative as high priority. This should enable the transfer of the refugees to take place as soon as possible, hopefully in the coming days,” explains Zuzana Vatralova, Head of the IOM Office in Slovakia.

There are an estimated 34,000 Palestinians in Iraq, of whom 23,000 have been registered by UNHCR in Baghdad. The Palestinian refugees came to Iraq in three main waves, in 1948, in 1967 and in 1991. Over the past three years, many more Palestinian families were forced to flee attacks and forced evictions inside Iraq.

For more information, please contact Zuzana Vatralova, IOM Bratislava, Tel: +421 2 5263 1597, E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

For more information about IOM Slovakia, please visit: www.iom.sk.