On Sunday, a Tunisian rights group condemned a “repressive and inhumane” government decision to deport a group of migrants who had been evacuated from a defunct refugee camp.
“The 25 men from Egypt, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan had sought asylum in Tunisia after fleeing violence in neighbouring Libya in 2011,” said Romdhane Ben Amor of the Tunisian Forum for Social and Economic Rights (FTDES).
The United Nations said in a recent report that migrants in Libya are “subject to systematic human rights violations and abuse, to compel them to accept so-called assisted returns to their countries of origin.”
The report noted that migrants in Libya are “trapped in an untenable situation.” They are being “forced to choose between returning to the countries they fled because of unsafe or unsustainable conditions — or facing continued ill-treatment in Libya.”
The report added that migrants are threatened with torture, sexual violence, enforced disappearances, and extortion.
Notably, the Tunisian cabinet approved the expulsion “as soon as possible of a group of migrants residing illegally in Tunisia.”
Since 2017, the migrants have been living in a youth center in Marsa, a suburb of the capital Tunis, “hindering its activities” by “categorically refusing to leave”, it added.
It urged civil society groups to mobilize against “discriminatory policies” that affect undocumented migrants, who have also been “neglected by United Nations agencies and the European Union.”
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR opened the Choucha camp in early 2011 to shelter those fleeing conflict amid the fall of Libya’s former leader Muammer Gaddafi. At its peak, Choucha hosted around 18,000 refugees.
But in 2013, UNHCR decided to close the camp while hundreds of its remaining residents were awaiting resettlement in third countries.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced in a statement that at least 1,042 migrants were rescued in the central Mediterranean, and returned to Libya last week.
It added that a total of 23,596 migrants attempted to cross the Mediterranean to Europe in 2022.
It added that 520 migrants died, and 844 went missing in the period from 1 January to 17 December 2022.
The IOM pointed out that 32,425 migrants disembarked on Libyan shores in 2021, while 662 died and 891 went missing.