Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas F. Ople announced the arrival last night of 24 Filipinos who were evacuated from strife-torn Ivory Coast in West Africa.  These Filipino evacuees had sought the help of the Department of Foreign Affairs to leave the country to escape an ongoing civil war.

Although Ople had authorized the release of funds early on in the crisis for their repatriation, it took a while to convince them to go along with the Philippine government’s recommendation for them to come home.  Many apparently still had outstanding financial obligations to fulfill before they felt ready to leave.

Philippine Ambassador to Nigeria Masaranga R. Umpa (whose Embassy in Abuja covers the Ivory Coast from the Nigerian capital) and his staff promptly went about helping these Filipinos in obtaining their release papers from (mostly) their employers.

The Embassy even dispatched Vice Consul Edward C. Yulo to accompany them home.  They landed at the NAIA at about 11 p.m. Friday, January 3rd after a grueling 20-hour journey from Abidjan, a large coastal city facing the Atlantic Ocean south of the Ivory Coast.

They were welcomed and assisted at the airport by DFA Undersecretary for Migrant Affairs Jose S. Brilliantes, Chief of Staff Susan Ople and DFA officers Ferdinand Victoria, Mauro Fajardo and Protocol officer Manuel Austria.

According to Vice Consul Yulo, the Philippine Embassy is still working on getting some 50 other Filipinos out of the Ivory Coast.  Most of them are in Abidjan. The Philippine Embassy in Nigeria is now working for the immediate repatriation of 5 additional OFW’s in San Pedro, some 8 hours away, aside from the remaining 50 workers in Abidjan.

The Ivory Coast, a former French colony in the West Coast of Africa, appears to be moving towards a full-blown civil war mounted by three separate rebel groups led by disgruntled former soldiers fighting the administration of President Laurent Gbagbo. The fairly new republic has a large French community that is now under the protection of French troops.

The French government has sought the cooperation of the rebel groups in allowing foreigners to leave the areas of conflict. Sometime last October, in the northern city of Bouaké, the rebels agreed to a brief ceasefire with government troops precisely to allow those foreigners who could have been caught in the crossfire to leave the area.