The NGO AOHR in Libya on Monday called on international organizations to help around 360 sub-Saharan migrants rescued in recent days after being abandoned, according to the Libyan authorities, in the desert on the border with Libya by the Tunisian police.
The Libyan branch of the Arab Organization for Human Rights “welcomed the reception” in Libya of migrants who “experienced difficult humanitarian situations” before being “rescued by Libyan border guards”.
“According to the Libyan guards, 360 migrants, including women and children, require urgent medical and humanitarian assistance,” added the organization, whose headquarters is in Cairo.
The AOHR urges the Libyan authorities to “allow the organizations concerned – the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the IOM – to meet with them and help them with legal procedures”.
Inhospitable areas
The IOM (International Organization for Migration) in Libya announced on Monday that it had provided “emergency assistance to migrants rescued at the border with Tunisia. 191 migrants received hygiene kits, clothes, mattresses and medical examinations, as well as protection and psychosocial assistance”.
The Libyan Interior Ministry said on Monday that it had “documented the expulsions [de ressortissants subsahariens] by the Tunisian authorities towards the Libyan borders”. He posted a video on Facebook containing testimonies from several migrants.
On Sunday, patrols by Libyan border guards rescued dozens of them left without water, food or shelter in the desert near the border with Tunisia, an AFP team noted.
The migrants abandoned by Tunisian police, according to border guards, were wandering in an uninhabited area near Al’Assah, 150 km southwest of Tripoli and about 15 km inside Libyan territory.
AFP journalists filmed groups of men and a few women, exhausted and thirsty, sitting or lying on the sand, trying to shelter under emaciated shrubs, in unbearable temperatures.
“Expelled”
Following clashes that cost the life of a Tunisian on July 3, hundreds of African migrants were driven out of Sfax, Tunisia’s second city and main point of departure for illegal emigration to Europe.
They were “expelled”, according to NGOs, by the Tunisian police, to inhospitable areas near Libya to the east and Algeria to the west.
At least 630 migrants brought back by the Tunisian authorities a week ago from the Libyan border have been grouped together in centers run by the Red Crescent, which carries out with the IOM a “profiling” of those who accept repatriation, applicants for asylum and refugees.
Tunisia concluded on Sunday a “strategic partnership” with the European Union including an important migratory component endowed with aid of 100 million euros (almost CA$150 million).
This provides for “the development of a system of identification and return of irregular migrants already present in Tunisia to their countries of origin”, according to the text of the document released late on Sunday.