The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has set in motion an operation to support an initiative by the African Union and the European Union to help 15,000 migrants return home from Libya by the end of the year.
The head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), William Lacy Swing, has confirmed the organization's full support for an initiative presented by the African Union (AU), the European Union (EU) and the Libyan National Unity Government alongside the United Nations (UN) to try to alleviate the conditions of thousands of migrants stuck in Libya.
The IOM has to this end started an operation aimed at helping 15,000 migrants return to their home countries from Libya by the end of 2017.
Step up returns
Following the news of continued abuse and overcrowding in Libyan detention centers and the meeting in Abidjan during the AU-EU summit Abidjan, the IOM stated that measures against migrant trafficking and abuse along the central Mediterranean route are being stepped up. The organization is now intensifying its program for Voluntary Humanitarian Returns, which since the beginning of 2017 has enabled over 14,007 migrants to return to their countries of origin, the statement added.
It said that a ''large-scale airlift is already underway in which IOM expects to take a further 15,000 migrants home from detention in Libya by end of the year. The establishment of a planned joint task force with all concerned parties is aimed at ensuring that the migration crisis in Libya is dealt with in a coordinated way.''
'Many migrants want to return home'
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," Swing said last week to IOM member states gathered in Geneva to take part in the IOM Council.
Swing added that the IOM intends to work with all UN partners to ensure that they act in a coordinated manner. A steep increase in migrants in Libyan detention centers has been seen in recent weeks, from around 5-6,000 to a current approximately 15,000 after transfers from ''unofficial'' detention centers in Sabratha.
Up to one million migrants in Libya
The IOM has registered over 400,000 migrants currently in Libya and estimated that the total number in the country ranges between 700,000 and 1 million. ''Large numbers of migrants are held in overcrowded detention centers, in conditions that fall far short of basic and humane standards. A large number of those migrants have expressed a wish to return to their countries of origin and IOM is now scaling up its air operations out of Libya to assist those men, women and children who may wish to return home,'' the statement said.