TRIPOLI — The International Organisation for Migration repatriated on Tuesday 160 Ethiopian migrants who had been stranded in Libya without travel documents.
“The 160 migrants boarded a chartered aircraft in the southern Libyan town of Sebha on Tuesday for a five-hour flight to Addis Abeba,” where they were met and assisted by IOM staff, the organisation said.
“This group of stranded migrants, like so many others, realised they had no future in Libya and wanted to return home but couldn’t because they had no money or documentation,” said the IOM’s Tripoli chief of mission Laurence Hart.
The IOM gave each migrant 400 euros (around 585 dollars) when they landed in Addis Abeba to help them “start income-generating activities” as part of its voluntary repatriation programme, the organisation said.
“The programme, set up in July 2006, has so far helped over 3,800 stranded and often destitute migrants from Africa and Asia to return home in dignity,” the statement said.
Libya, with its porous land and sea borders, is a major starting point for sub-Saharan Africans risking their lives in rickety boats with the hope of asylum or simply a better life in Europe.
The IOM said that many of the Ethiopians it repatriated on Tuesday said they had been in Libya “for years, trying to seek out a living as undocumented migrants, or to save up” money to travel on to Europe.
Some of them said they reached Libya after dangerous treks across the Sahara.
More than one million illegal migrants are in Libya to try to cross the Mediterranean towards Europe, according to the IOM.
– AFP