UNCHR Evacuates 66 Refugees To Rwanda

The United Nations (UN) through its refugee agency UNHCR has confirmed that 66 refugees arrived in Rwanda on Thursday, September 26 from Libya, under a lifesaving agreement.

In the life-saving deal that Rwanda signed with African Union (AU) and UNHCR, it was agreed that Rwanda would accommodate refugees from Libya in batches of 500 so that the country doesn’t feel overwhelmed.

When the first group of refugees which consisted of a two-month-old girl, single mothers, unaccompanied minors and families arrived in Kigali, the Rwandan government received them and announced that the government is ready to accommodate up to 30,000 refugees.

The Rwandan government is expected to be hosted in a transit center in Rwanda’s capital before they are finally resettled elsewhere or opt to return to their home countries.

UNHCR officials say that 125 more refugees are expected to be flown to Rwanda between 10^th and 12^th October 2019, and 42,000 refugees are still stuck in Libya.

Rwanda President Paul Kagame had first agreed to host refugees in his country in 2017 when CNN aired a report revealing suspected slave trade going on as Libya was used as a transit point for migrants going to Europe.

In Libya, there have been reports that they are trapped by a network of the militia who run detention centers and others are sold as slaves or into prostitution.

There were also claims that the European Union was responsible for the suffering of migrants as EU was said to fund the Libyan coastguard who picked migrants in a boat at the Mediterranean and sending them to detention camps.

It is the bombing of a migrant detention center in Tajoura that occurred in July, leaving at least 44 people dead, caused an uproar leading to the international pressure to find a way of saving refugees.

More than 2,900 refugees have since been evacuated from Libya by UNHCR and taken to Niger, but are said to be overcrowded in refugee housing facilities and the process of their resettlement is too slow.

UN has owned up to claims that it did not handle the Niger evacuation properly. For the current evacuation, UN and Rwanda officials have said they have learned from the Niger experience.