The UN Refugee Agency is negotiating with Libyan authorities to open a center in Tripoli for migrants in transit towards third countries.
The UNHCR representative for Libya, Roberto Mignone, said the UN Refugee Agency would like to open a center in Tripoli for migrants in transit, ''to group refugees or the most vulnerable asylum seekers'' so they can leave from there to third countries. Mignone made the statement during an audition at the Italian Senate's human rights commission. Mignone stressed that the center would host families, women, the elderly, disabled and children, ''in practice everyone except men on their own unless they are vulnerable''. He continued saying that ''everyone loses'' in the system currently in place in Libya.
''Refugees experience a grave situation, crossing the sea with one in 39 dying and they all arrive in Italy'' without being redistributed, the UNHCR representative noted. Refugees should be ''resettled'' but the procedure is a ''slow system'' that helps ''tens, perhaps hundreds of people'' while ''we would like to reach thousands'', he said.
Technically, Libyan authorities ''have authorized us'' to open the center but ''have not specified whether there will be freedom of movement'' and this aspect is key, he noted, ''because we could never fund a detention center''. The UNHCR is thus ''waiting for the Libyan interior ministry to confirm''.
80 percent of those traveling from Libya to Italy are economic migrants
'We estimate that some 20 percent of people departing from Libya towards Italy are refugees and probably 80 percent are economic migrants'', explained Mignone. Refugees and asylum seekers in the country ''are 42,800 - 85 percent are people who had been residing in Libya for several years, while 15 percent, 6,500 people including 4,000 this year, were registered from 2016 until today. They are presumably part of the mixed migration flow'' including economic migrants who are assisted by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and ''people who need international protection''.
Limitation of aid
An estimated ''6,000 people'' are detained in Libyan centers.''There are official and unofficial centers'', he said. The latter are ''particularly worrying because under the control of militias''. In the best of situations they are ''overcrowded while in others there are real violations of human rights, including episodes of sexual violence'', explained Mignone.
For the moment, UNHCR can work ''with people from seven countries: Somalia, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Eritrea and Sudan, but only if they come from Darfur, and Ethiopia only if they are members of the Oromo ethnic group''. The limitations are due to the fact that Libya ''has not signed the convention on refugees and we don't have a memorandum of understanding'' with the country. Over the past few months, ''we have contributed to the release of over 1,000 people."