Libya: MSF calls for speeding up the evacuation of the most vulnerable exiles

Migrants in the Ain Zara detention center in Tripoli on October 12, 2021. REUTERS - HAZEM AHMED

Text by: RFI Follow

2 mins

Some 600,000 exiles are currently in Libya, subjected to confinement and slavery, according to the estimate of international organizations, victims of violence denounced by the UN.

Now, Libya's coastguards or militias intercept a majority of people fleeing the country to Europe and return them to detention.

On this World Refugee Day, Doctors Without Borders, which operates in the country, publishes a report on the lack of protection for exiles and the weakness of the mechanisms allowing them to leave the country.

MSF is calling for the evacuation of the most vulnerable to be accelerated, in particular through the humanitarian corridors.

Advertising

Read more

Two years is what it takes sometimes for a resettlement process from the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to succeed.

Last year, only 1,662 exiles were able to leave the Libyan hell under this framework, out of approximately 40,000 registered by the organization.

The lack of places offered by Western countries is glaring.

This year, only Sweden came forward by offering to support 350 people.

But Doctors Without Borders believes that only evacuation can bring exiles to safety and ensure follow-up care.

Care that the NGO provides in Tripoli in detention centers, as well as in Zouara, Misrata and Beni Walid with mobile clinics.

To accelerate these evacuations, other means exist, and in particular the humanitarian corridors, pleads MSF.

► To read also: 

Reduce dangerous and illegal migration routes

Initiated by the private organization Sant'Egidio, the device already works with Lebanon and Ethiopia and France participates in it.

Extending the system to Libya is urgent, believes MSF.

Italy has started and Doctors Without Borders hopes that other countries will follow, the NGO exchanges in particular with the French authorities.

In Libya, violence against civilians and exiles could fall under "crimes against humanity", writes the UN in a report.

While the European Commission suggests that Member States develop complementary pathways to reduce dangerous and illegal migratory routes. 

We are asking countries that can be host countries, particularly in Europe and North America, to find ways to get the most vulnerable out of Libya (these are migrants who are systematically victims of torture, who come in particular from Africa Sub-Saharan Africa) in ways that are more efficient and faster.

They already exist for a small number of cases, apart from resettlements which are managed by the UNHCR, apart from returns to their country of origin which are organized by the IOM, there are cases of family reunification, humanitarian visas for particularly serious medical cases, and there is also, which is developing more and more, what is called private sponsorship which allows citizens, but also NGOs, to offer themselves as a reception actor migrants in a host country.

The idea,

it is also that wider humanitarian corridors, there is already one towards Italy, allow us to present ourselves as an actor of identification in Libya because little by little, we have learned to identify the cases whose life was threatened.

But what's missing, at the moment, are mechanisms for these cases to be taken into account, and taken into account quickly enough.

Jérôme Tubiana, co-author of the MSF report

Juliette Gheerbrant

Newsletter

Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_EN

• Libya

• International Migrations

• UN

• Refugees

• NGO

• Humanitarian