Libya deported over 150 Nigerian women and children on Tuesday as part of a UN-supported “voluntary return” program for irregular migrants, according to an immigration representative and sources from the UN.
Libya serves as a crucial launch point on North Africa’s Mediterranean coastline for migrants, predominantly from other regions in Africa, who undertake perilous sea journeys in pursuit of reaching Europe.
Mohamad Baredaa of Libya’s migration agency informed AFP that those deported on Tuesday were exclusively Nigerian “women traveling with children.”
According to sources from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the UN body was involved in the repatriation efforts, and the group consisted of 160 women and 17 children.
They assembled in a waiting area at a Tripoli detention centre, mainly wearing black tracksuits, before being transported by bus to Mitiga airport in the Libyan capital.
Baredaa said that additional repatriation flights are slated to depart this week from Mitiga and an airport in Benghazi, in eastern Libya, carrying groups of Bangladeshi, Gambian, and Malian migrants.
Ongoing violence and instability in Libya since the 2011 ousting and death of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in a NATO-supported uprising have transformed the nation into a hotspot for human traffickers.
Smugglers and traffickers have long faced accusations of exploiting individuals. The IOM reports that there are over 700,000 migrants present in Libya. However, Libyan authorities claim that the actual number is significantly higher.
Imad Trabelsi, the interior minister of Libya’s UN-recognised government in Tripoli, said this week that there may be “more than four million migrants” in the country but acknowledged that precise figures are lacking since many are undocumented.
To ease concerns among Libyans, Trabelsi noted on Monday that the nation “will not shoulder the burden of illegal immigration alone and will not become a resettlement zone.”
