News

January 22, 2018

Thousands of African Migrants Detained in Libya to be Repatriated

This year, the IOM has brought more than 14,000 mainly sub-Saharan migrants back to their home countries. The current operation will more than double the number of migrants who will have been voluntarily repatriated by year's end. Most come from Nigeria, Guinea, Gambia, Mali and Senegal. Migrants signing up for the program are desperate to return home, according to IOM spokesman Leonard Doyle. "A senior colleague of ours was in a detention center on Monday of this week with some senior EU delegations. There were about 1,000 people crammed into the space pleading, begging, shouting to be taken home," he said. Doyle tells VOA the migrants to be flown home are in government-administered detention centers in and around Tripoli. They account for only a small portion of the migrants being detained throughout Libya. "There are many, many, many other detention centers run by criminal gangs — dreadful hovels, torture — which we do not have access to and that is what is leading to the reports and allegations of slave auctions. It is away from the government centers," he said. The IOM has registered more than 400,000 migrants in Libya, though the actual number thought to be in the country is estimated at 700,000 to one million.