Hats off to UN who vows to bring back around 15000 migrants from Libya

Geneva, December 2: “We will bring back the migrants trapped in Libya” says International Organization for Migration (IOM) Director General William Lacy Swing. He has committed IOM to fully support this week’s initiative of the African Union with the European Union and Libya’s Government of National Unity, with UN backing to alleviate the plight of thousands of migrants trapped in Libya.

 

The United Nations migration agency plans to fly 15,000 more migrants home from detention centres in Libya before year-end in the wake of shocking reports of rampant migrant abuse and squalid and overcrowded conditions at these facilities across the North African country.

“Scaling up our return programme may not serve to fully address the plight of migrants in Libya, but it is our duty to take migrants out of detention centers as a matter of absolute priority,” said Swing at its Council meeting in Geneva on Thursday.

Libya in recent weeks has witnessed a drastic increase in the numbers of migrants held in detention centres – from a usual range of 5,000 to 6,000 to over 15,000, as migrants have been transferred from unofficial detention centres in Sabratha. Migrants face smuggling and mistreatment during their journey on the central Mediterranean route, which claimed 2,803 migrant lives to drowning this year alone.

 

To date, IOM has registered more than 400,000 migrants in Libya, with the total number of migrants in the country estimated to be more than 700,000 to one million.

The scaling up of the assistance will also include migrants wishing to go back home but are not in detention centres.

“This is a choice people make voluntarily, hoping for a new start at home,” said Othman Belbeisi, IOM’s Chief of Mission in Libya. “We are conscious that return alone is not sufficient to address the situation of migrants in Libya, and therefore we are also committed to expanding our advocacy and capacity building efforts in order to introduce new approaches to migration management in Libya, in close cooperation with the Government of Libya and partners in the UN."

So far this year IOM has assisted some 14,007 migrants going home from Libya, a significant increase compared to the 2,775 voluntary returns carried out in 2016. The majority of migrants asking to join this programme are Sub-Saharan Africans, including migrants originating from Nigeria (4,316), Guinea (1,588), the Gambia (1,351), Mali (1,305) and Senegal (973).

Background:

Most refugees stranded in Libya come from West Africa, from countries such as Nigeria, Guinea, Burkina Faso or Ivory Coast. Additionally, many Eritreans and Somalians are also among those who hope to find a better future in Europe. Oftentimes they use a route crossing Niger's desert city of Agadez, where they encounter human traffickers, who promise to get them to the Mediterranean Coast and on to Europe. That journey, however, often ends in Libya.