The United Nations migration agency will send home an additional 15,000 migrants from detention camps in Libya before the year ends, the agency announced Dec. 1.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said it registered more than 400,000 migrants in Libya, though it estimates the total number ranges between 700,000 and 1 million. The group’s voluntary repatriation program already returned more than 14,000 migrants to their homes this year. The voluntary program includes migrants from Nigeria, Guinea, and Gambia, among other countries.
Increasing reports of migrant abuse prompted the extra repatriation efforts. CNN in November released a video from a property outside Libya’s capital city, Tripoli, where a salesman auctioned off a dozen people in six minutes for about $400 each. Several migrants who started off with plans to arrive in Europe narrated how smugglers sold them off for daily labor and how they were beaten and held in deplorable conditions.
“Scaling up our return program 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,” said William Lacy Swing, the IOM director general.
More than 160,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean Sea and arrived in Europe this year, with 3,038 migrants dying en route, according to the IOM. The number of migrant arrivals…
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