Stranded African migrants in Libya get lifeline from world bodies

If stories being told by Nigerian returnees from Libya are anything to go by, then the lives of thousands of African migrants still trapped in Libya are at severe risk.

Twenty-five-year-old Deola from Ogun State came back from Libya on 27 December. She said was initially promised she was going to the United States but was sold into sex slavery when she arrived in Libya.
“My experience in the desert was terrible. I saw so many things that I don’t want to remember again. I don’t even know where to start or where to stop. Just know that it was terrible.

“When we landed in Libya, I was told that I would have to pay 600 dinars to cover what was spent to bring me to Libya from Nigeria. The following day, I started work as a prostitute against my wish. I saw a lot of things that I can’t talk about. In fact, they treated us as slave. Even when you are sick, nobody cared. Several others had similar bitter experiences,” she told a staff member from The Migrant Project.

It is against this backdrop that the African Union (AU), the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) have jointly set up a taskforce to tackle the issue of African migrants stranded in Libya.
After a taskforce meeting last month in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, the AU Commissioner for Social Affairs, who is also the AU

Special Envoy to Libya, Amira Elfadil, told journalists that the situation of migrants stranded in Libya still needed serious attention. In particular, migrants held in private detention centres or held by militia groups are still in dire need of help.
However, progress has been made by the AU-EU-UN taskforce to repatriate migrants trapped in Libya to their various countries of origin or to other third countries. As part of this repatriation process, migrants are often provided with support to reintegrate back into their society.

“The taskforce has managed to repatriate more than 16,000 migrants from Libya, and the number of migrants in government-controlled detention centers has reduced from 20,000 in November 2017 to about 3,400 during my last visit to Libya two months ago,” Elfadil said.
Amira
further said efforts were underway by the Committee of Intelligence and Security Service of Africa to dismantle organised criminal gangs in Libya and neighbouring states, who are profiteering from the miseries of migrants.
The International Organization for Migration says there are more than 620,000 migrants currently in Libya, some of whom have been there for decades.

26/04/2018