A first group of 59 Palestinian refugees who remained stranded for many years in an overcrowded makeshift camp in the Iraqi desert, arrived safely yesterday at a new Emergency Training Centre in the northern Romanian city of Timisoara.

IOM and UNHCR accompanied the families from Al Waleed camp to the Jordanian border, and then onwards to Amman’s Marka airport, where they boarded an IOM-chartered flight for Timisoara.

"The families were exhausted but so happy to have left the dire living conditions in Al Waleed camp," says IOM’s Haifa Khalil, who helped the families in transit at the airport. "All said they looked forward to the prospect of starting new lives in resettlement countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom."

The refugees will now temporarily be housed in the new Emergency Transit Centre while their applications for resettlement are processed. IOM will provide medical support and cultural orientation classes to prepare them to meet the challenges and opportunities of daily life in resettlement countries.

Some 1,200 Palestinian refugees from Al Waleed camp are expected to transit through the Centre before being resettled in the United States.

The centre, which was officially opened last month, is the result of the Tripartite Agreement jointly signed by the Romanian government, UNHCR and IOM. It offers refugees access to a durable solution and participates in the international burden sharing. The opening and effective use of this centre illustrates the complementary of work between IOM and UNHCR.

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.

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