The United Nations Refugee Agency UNHCR on Thursday said a group of 100 refugees was evacuated out of war-hit Libya to Italy in what was the third direct humanitarian evacuation to the country this year.
The people evacuated include 52 children from countries such as Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan. The youngest is a seven-month-old baby from Somalia named Yousef who was born in detention and traveling with his parents. Many of the refugees had been held in detention in Libya for long periods, some for more than eight months.
“Today we have taken 98 people to safety, but this is still only a small number of the thousands who need such help,” said Jean-Paul Cavalieri, UNHCR Chief of Mission for Libya.
Cavalieri said there are still some 3,600 refugees in detention centers and there is an urgent need to find solutions for them, as well as thousands more vulnerable refugees living in urban areas.
UNHCR lauded Libyan Ministry of Interior, and its partner LibAid, for their support and assistance with the release and transfer of the refugees out of the detention centers.
“Today’s evacuation is an example of solidarity, and we thank the Italian authorities for making this possible,” said Roland Schilling, UNHCR Regional Representative for Southern Europe. We hope that other countries will heed this example and provide similar, life-saving humanitarian evacuations,”
Before being freed from detention and flown to Italy, the refugees were hosted in UNHCR’s Gathering and Departure Facility in Tripoli, where they were provided with food, shelter, clothes, hygiene kits and medical assistance including psycho-social support.
Following this evacuation, the UNHCR has helped a total 1,474 vulnerable refugees to get out of Libya in 2019, including 710 to Niger, 393 to Italy and 371 who have been resettled to other countries in Europe and Canada.
Earlier this week, the Rwandan government agreed to take in hundreds of African refugees and asylum-seekers held in detention centers in Libya under an agreement reached with the UN refugee agency and the African Union. The first group of 500 people, including children and at-risk youth, will be evacuated in the coming weeks.
