Hadidja Banaye, 37, lived in Libya for 18 years. In 2011, she returned to the small town of Moussoro in the West of Chad.

Just like another 1300 people who reportedly returned to her town, her return was sudden and involuntary due to the Libyan crisis in 2011.

Hadidja returned to Moussoro with her husband and six children. They first arrived in the capital of Chad, N'Djamena, during one of the return operations implemented by IOM, which facilitated the transportation by plane of 31,599 people from Libya and neighboring countries in 2011. Upon arrival in N'Djamena, they were met by the IOM registration team and received psychosocial as well as medical assistance, food and shelter in one of the three IOM Transit Centres in the capital.

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Within one day, they were provided with transportation to Moussoro by IOM. They are now settled in Hadidja´s parents´ home, which they share with another 18 relatives. While the family received them with lots of love and joy and provided them with accommodation and food, the house is barely large enough to offer space for everyone. There is no toilet and neither water nor electricity. Some family members started working in the market to gain a modest income to provide food for the family. But the remittances which were formerly sent from Libya are missing.

Hadidja says that the change from living and working in Libya to returning to her parent's house has been hard: "Access to health services here is precarious and the access to school for my kids is very complicated".

As many other returnees in Moussoro, she hopes to receive support for her socio-economic reintegration. "We want to work, we are ready to work, but we need the initial economic support to do it, since we arrived with our pockets empty, despite our work in Libya for so many years. We need help to start again", Hadidja says emphatically.

The return to his home in Moussoro from Libya for Sultan Mahamat is not very different. Sultan, 37, has 2 wives and 9 children to support. He moved to Libya with the hope of establishing himself there, working in construction and supporting his family by sending home remittances.

He was looking for a job for just 2 months in Benghazi, the second biggest city of Libya, when large-scale fighting erupted and he fled fearing for his life. Sultan returned home with the help of IOM after only two months and his dream of a better future for his children ended with the beginning of the conflict in Libya.

He was looking for a job in construction, as he was told that the construction sector in Libya is hiring many unskilled laborers, often from Sub-Saharan countries like Chad. However, he returned without savings but with the sad and hard memories of a departure in the middle of the Libyan crisis. His story is similar to many other Chadian returnees, who were confronted with the realities of open conflict and who now, upon return to the safe homes of their families, have to face their families and communities empty handed.

Today, Sultan occasionally works in agriculture. His salary is not sufficient to provide support for his family. "I would like to have my own piece of land to plow because I want to stay here by my family´s side, I don't want to go back to Libya or somewhere else".

The story of these two returnees represents the needs and current situation of many of the returnees from Libya. The psychosocial, cultural and socio-economic reintegration in the host communities has not been an easy process which is reflected in the results of an impact assessment of the returnees carried out in all regions in the country. The assessment was implemented by IOM as part of the final phase of the project "Humanitarian Assistance to Chadian Returnees and Third Country Nationals who fled the Libyan Crisis" funded by the European Commission Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO).

ECHO has funded through IOM not only the transportation of the returnees, but also the installation of Transit Centers throughout the country to provide medical, psychosocial and nutritional first aid as well as registration, protection and reintegration support to the arrival of the migrants. In total IOM provided support to over 90,000 returnees and Third Country Nationals from Libya until March 2012.