South Sudanese among 176 asylum seekers evacuated from Libya

At least 176 vulnerable asylum seekers, among them South Sudanese, were evacuated from Libya to Rwanda yesterday, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees has said.

The other asylum seekers were from Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan’s majority.

UNHCR said the group comprised victims of trafficking and survivors of gender-based violence, with several released from the detention centres in Libya.

This is the second batch to be lifted to Rwanda, as the first batch left in July 2019, according to the UN Refugee Agency official.

The UNHCR Chief of Mission for Libya, Jean-Paul Cavalieri, said the government of Libya had facilitated the flight for the younger seekers who had a chance to grow up safely.

He said the asylum seekers would stay at the Gashora based emergency transit centre where the UNHCR would provide them with accommodation, medication, food, and water as well as psychosocial support and life skills training.

The UNHCR Representative in Rwanda, Ahmed Baba Fall, said they expected more asylum seekers to be evacuated to Rwanda safely and that the Rwandan government was backing the effort to support the refugees and asylum seekers in the country.

He said a total of 824 asylum seekers and refugees have so far been evacuated from Libya to Rwanda under an emergency transit mechanism since 2019.

The UNHCR said it was grateful for resettlement pledges made available to the emergency transit centre by the countries, as well as the contribution of finances from those in Australia, Denmark, the European Union, France, Melta, Norway, and Switzerland.

The officials said UNHCR had resumed humanitarian flights from 2017 where 7,490 refugees and asylum seekers had been deported from Libya.