The Special Envoy of the UN High Commissioner of Refugees in the Middle East, Vincent Cochetel, said evacuation of immigrants and refugees from Libya and Niger is being protracted by the the countries that promised to host them.
Belgium, United Kingdom, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States have all agreed to resettle certain numbers of the immigrants and refugees trapped in Libya – the total number is 48000 – as thousands of refugees and immigrants have been evacuated to Niger in the process of being settled in third countries.
“These countries are not making progress rapidly in the immigrants and refugees’ issues. They might think that if the immigrants arrived from Libya to Niger, then their emergency cases would have ended.” Cochetel explained to Agence France-Presse.
The remarks by Cochetel were made on the sidelines of a meeting held in the Malian capital Bamako in the presence of the international experts and African ministers to discuss forced displacement in the Sahel region.
