As numbers of refugees and asylum seekers locked in Libya’s overcrowded detention centers increase, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) inaugurated a Gathering and Departure Facility (GDF) in Tripoli Tuesday.
Opened in the coordination between Libyan authorities and UNHCR, GDF aims to bring vulnerable refugees to a safe environment, resettle them, evacuate them to emergency facilities in other countries and voluntarily repatriate them to their home land. It has the capacity to shelter up to 1,000 refugees.
“The opening of this center, in very difficult circumstances, has the potential to save lives. It offers immediate protection and safety for vulnerable refugees in need of urgent evacuation, and is an alternative to detention for hundreds of refugees currently trapped in Libya,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.
After hosting them, GDF helped the Libyan Ministry of Interior and UNHCR to evacuate 133 refugees from Libya to Niger on Thursday.
“With an estimated 4,900 refugees and migrants held in detention centers across Libya, including 3,600 in need of international protection, the center is a critical alternative to the detention of those most vulnerable,” UNHCR said on Thursday.
Thousands of people, especially Sub-Saharan Africans, continue to cross Africa’s Sahel into Libya and across the Central Mediterranean to Europe, driven by despair they face in their home countries, regardless of the challenges and risks they might face.
“The majority of refugees registered comprise of Palestinians (5,312 individuals) and Iraqis (2,462 individuals), while the majority of asylum-seekers comprise of Syrians (23,203 individuals) and Sudanese nationals (9,409 individuals), ” according to the UNHCR’s report in October.
With being unable to enter Europe, namely Italy, due to the European Union’s migration policy or being rescued at the Mediterranean by the EU-backed Libyan Coast Guard, hundreds of migrants and refugees have returned to Libya and have been automatically placed in detention centers.
In these overcrowded centers, they face severe abuses, including rape and torture, extortion, forced labour, slavery, and dire living conditions.
Due to the fighting that shook Tripoli in August between rival groups, hundreds of migrants at detention centers have been abandoned without food or water.
Some 400 people were abandoned in the detention center at Ain Zara in southern Tripoli, part of a network of state facilities where migrants intercepted by the coastguard are held, one aid worker told Reuters.
Further, since the beginning of the 2011 civil war in Libya, the country has experienced ongoing armed conflict between rival militias and government forces, causing lack of security. Hence, armed groups, criminal gangs, smugglers, and traffickers exploited the situation to control much of the flow of migrants to Libya, the majority of whom live in the detention centers.
