MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th November, 2020) The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has resumed evacuation flights to carry vulnerable asylum seekers out of Libya to Rwanda after being suspended for months due to the pandemic, agency representative Babar Baloch said on Friday.
"UNHCR... has evacuated yesterday evening (Thursday 19 Nov) a group of 79 vulnerable asylum-seekers out of Libya to safety in Rwanda. These critical, life-saving flights from Libya to Rwanda had been on hold for nearly a year because of COVID-19-related worldwide border closures and movement restrictions," Baloch said in a statement.
The group follows 306 other evacuees transported earlier as part of the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM) which seeks to provide legal asylum for them to avert refugees from the dangerous sea route, the UNHCR said.
The evacuees were from Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia but were mostly living in Tripoli. Many had previously been in detention, some for several years, the statement read.
The ETM was set up in mid-2019 by an agreement between the UNHCR, the government of Rwanda and the African Union.
Currently, more than 45,200 refugees and asylum seekers are registered with UNHCR in Libya, including nearly 670 held in government-run detention centers, according to the agency's figures.
