IOM to Attain UN Agency Status on September 6

By Dele Ogbodo in Abuja

The National Project Officer for International Organization for Migration (IOM), Mr. Tunde Omoyeni, said on Saturday that the necessary arrangement has been concluded for IOM to attain the agency status of the United Nations (UN), on September 2016.

He said: “With the new status, IOM will now assume the same status like UNICEF, WHO, UNDEP, UNECA, UNESCO and its other globally affiliated agencies.

“As it is now, we are an inter-governmental organization but we are at the level where we are about to be part of the UN. This is from September, though we do a lot of things with the UN in the area of security and programming.

“We have reached an agreement and by September 6, we are going to be officially recognized as part of UN, and so we can now be officially called UN agency.”

Omoyeni, who made the disclosure during a capacity workshop for journalists in Abuja, said IOM is a leading inter-governmental organization and not an NGO.

While IOM is principally concerned with discouraging irregular migration, it facilitates the process of regular migration across the world, adding, we don’t have mandate on the issue of refugees, but we work on the issue of internal displacement.

According to him, IOM was established in 1951 to assist in moving migrants from Europe in the wake of World war (11), and since then has grown into intergovernmental organization with 163 member states.

“They have signed agreement with IOM to be part of it and so Nigeria is a member with 480 field locations.” he said.