Europe should develop an emergency plan to evacuate migrants from the official reception centers in Libya, as the lives of the people there are in danger amid the ongoing civil war, Italian lawmaker Marco Minniti told Sputnik in an interview
GENOA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th February, 2020) Europe should develop an emergency plan to evacuate migrants from the official reception centers in Libya, as the lives of the people there are in danger amid the ongoing civil war, Italian lawmaker Marco Minniti told Sputnik in an interview.
The Libyan authorities are facing big difficulties with managing the detention centers in the current conditions of war, and sometimes the camps themselves become targets of military action.
"In my opinion, at this moment, Europe should put in place an extraordinary plan to evacuate official migrant centers in Libya. This would be a very important signal [from the side of Europe] that would protect the migrants who unfortunately find themselves in the center of military operations. Secondly, it would be a real aid to the Libyan people," Minniti, who is considered to be among the most prominent Italian politicians dealing with the Libyan issue, said.
Last week, Libya and Italy extended the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed in 2017 and aimed at preventing illegal migration, for an additional three years. According to the lawmaker, though extending the document was the right decision, Rome has not ruled out the need to improve it. Minniti explained that in 2017, Libya had internal tensions but nevertheless was looking toward a path to stabilization. Now, the country is in a state of civil war, which definitely impacts migration.
"Hence, what is needed is an improvement of the MoU and a European mission to open humanitarian corridors to evacuate reception centers because lives of people there are under threat," Minniti said, adding that it was possible that Italy would see a wave of arrivals from Libya soon.
According to the lawmaker, though Italy has long received migrants from Libya, none of them were Libyan, as Libya is systematically used as a transit country for people from other African countries. However, there are now Libyans among those who have already arrived in Italy.
"If the civil war continues, there is a risk of a new wave of influx as Libyans themselves will be fleeing the country. This is not a new situation, because, after NATO's military intervention in Libya in 2011, we had a migration wave directly of Libyans who were coming to Italy and to Europe. Continuous civil war may lead to a humanitarian emergency," the lawmaker added.
Italy's concern over the migrant situation was demonstrated by Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio's statement during his recent meeting with Libyan Interior Minister Fathi Bashaga, who visited Rome last week. In particular, Di Maio said that Italy would soon present amendments to improve the bilateral migration deal, with particular attention to the rights of migrants and asylum seekers to the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA).
According to the UNHCR report on the humanitarian situation in Libya, as of February 7, there are currently around 355,000 internally displaced Libyans and around 47,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers in the country.
The first wave of Libyan migrants was triggered in 2011 by the ouster and assassination of then-leader Muammar Gaddafi, which plunged the country into a brutal civil war. Libya has since been divided between two centers of power � the UN-recognized GNA, headed by Fayez Sarraj and based in Tripoli, in the west, and the Libyan National Army led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar in the country's east.
