Libya Has Plenty Of Resources, Reestablishing Oil Incomes Now Best Way Of Helping - ICRC

Libya Has Plenty of Resources, Reestablishing Oil Incomes Now Best Way of Helping - ICRC

Despite years of political turmoil, Libya remains a rich country with enough resources to cover its humanitarian needs, so the best way to help the country is to reestablish its oil incomes, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Peter Maurer told Sputnik

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th February, 2020) Despite years of political turmoil, Libya remains a rich country with enough resources to cover its humanitarian needs, so the best way to help the country is to reestablish its oil incomes, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Peter Maurer told Sputnik.

"The best way of assisting Libyans today would be to have a ceasefire and to have reestablishment of oil incomes into the country. Because Libya is a rich country, has potential. So we don't want to substitute humanitarian [assistance] or to increase humanitarian assistance when there are still local resources," Maurer said.

He added that the ICRC is still reviewing the possibility of boosting help to Libya since the country has a lot of "vulnerable" people. He recalled that about 200,000 Libyans have been displaced in the last nine months alone due to an escalation in the conflict between the elected parliament in the country's east, supported by the Libyan National Army, and the UN-backed Government of National Accord in the west.

"Of course, on the other hand, we see that more people are vulnerable in particularly women, children, elderly, physically challenged people. So ICRC will try to increase [help] for those particularly vulnerable people," Maurer said.

The ICRC president went on to say that the budget on Libya almost doubled in a year and a half.

"For the time being, we are still at the beginning of the year, we have resources, we will spend resources and when more needs are emerging we will go back to the international community [asking for financial support in Libya]," Maurer noted.

Libya is one of the organization's biggest operations in Africa, with the humanitarian distress extending to both the migrant and indigenous populations due to a prolonged armed conflict between the two rival governments.