The 3rd of March, 2011 is a day that Fouda, 10 years old, will never forget: it was the last time she and her three siblings saw their father when he left their home in search of food for them. He never returned.

It was the beginning of the crisis in Libya, which caused 91.000 Chadians to involuntarily return to their country of origin. Most of them fled with their families, all together leaving their goods, savings and jobs behind.

Fouda and her siblings, all underage, stayed home alone for 30 days just waiting to see their father would return, but they never heard from him again. They could neither go out due to the street commotion of the revolution nor understand well what was happening in the country.

Zanaba, their mother, had left to visit a relative in Sabha, in southern Libya, when the crisis started. Since the roads were blocked, she could not return to Tripoli to join her four children.

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In the middle of the hostilities, the neighbors decided to flee the situation and seek refuge in Tunisia. They decided to take the four children with them to keep them safe until they could be reunited with their parents.

In Tunisia, the four children were registered in one of the IOM transit centers where they were identified as unaccompanied minors and assisted by the IOM staff to be moved to their parents´ country, Chad. In close collaboration between IOM Tunisia and IOM Chad, the mother of the four children could be identified and it was possible for the children to return to Chad.

IOM Chad also assisted another 27 unaccompanied minors with primary care and reintegration packages. Where possible, IOM has supported family tracing and reunification. Such process is undertaken in order to guarantee the children's protection and their reunion and reintegration with relatives.

This way, Zanaba's children were assisted by IOM to return to N'Djamena - in a country unknown to them - where their uncle awaited them at the airport.

Being parentless and in a foreign country was the first concern they had to face. They had to start adapting to a new culture, a new language, new friends and also a new family.

Two months had passed since they arrived in N'Djamena. It was May then, and they had not heard from their parents. "I thought my parents had died and I would never see them again", said Bouchara, the oldest daughter, 17.

This was exactly what Zanaba believed, "I thought my children had been murdered in the middle of the crisis and I would never see them again…". Since roads to Tripoli were blocked, Zanaba embarked on a one month journey through the desert from Sabha to N'Djamena in the hope of being reunited with her children.

Then, one day in May, her children opened the door of the house, where they were living with their uncle and aunt and could not believe their eyes: their mother had survived the fighting and the ordeal of the journey and had returned to them.

Zanaba had lived with her husband in Tripoli for 25 years. She did housework and he worked in agriculture. Their children had been born there and they all had a good quality of life. "My children used to go to school and we had a nice house with all facilities indeed. I would have never wanted to return to Chad, but here we are…" says Zanaba.

The whereabouts of Zanaba's husband remained unknown. Nobody heard about him, not even the friends who could escape Tripoli. Zanaba only heard rumors saying alternately that he had been murdered in the middle of the crisis or that he had been taken to jail. But she did not trust anything she heard. She firmly believed, that she would be seeing him again and that her entire family would be reunited one day.

On March 17th, ten months later, Zanaba received a phone call from her husband. "He said he is fine; he said he has been running away from one place to another; he said he could not talk to me more, but he expects to come to Chad soon to meet us", Zanaba says with hopeful eyes.

IOM Chad is currently exploring options to facilitate his return to be reunited with his family.