The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) arranged a handover ceremony to deliver medicines and supplies to five primary healthcare facilities in southern Libya, as part of the Support to Integrated border and migration management in Libya (SIBMMIL) project.
The event was attended by multiple government entities, managers from the facilities, and delegates from the Italian Embassy in Libya.
Earlier this month, the IOM announced that patrols intercepted a total of 726 migrants off the coast of Libya, and returned them to shore. This comes in parallel with a security campaign launched by the government against human trafficking gangs.
On Monday, it reported that the migrants, including women and children, were “intercepted and returned” to Libya between 21-27 May 2023.
“So far this year, a total of 5,784 illegal immigrants have been intercepted and returned to Libya,” the organisation said. It added that 643 migrants have died, and another 332 are missing at sea off the coast.
In 2020, the number of migrants in Libya declined as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its socioeconomic impact. Since 2021, the number of migrants has been increasing, yet it remains far lower than prior to the onset of conflict in 2011, when there was an estimated 2.5 million migrants in Libya.
In its periodic report, the UN organisation said that the migrants are distributed among the Libyan cities as follows: “112,266 migrants in Tripoli, 83,877 migrants in Benghazi, 71,718 migrants in Misrata, 58,860 in Ajdabiya, 44,770 in Zawiya, 40,132 in Al-Marqab, and 34,480 in Al-Jafara, while there are 31,215 immigrants in Zuwara, and the rest of the immigrants are distributed over more than 100 Libyan municipalities.”
In line with previous rounds of data collection, the majority of migrants in Libya are nationals from neighbouring countries: Niger (24%), Egypt (23%), Sudan (19%), and Chad (12%).
This trend highlights the influence of geographical proximity, and diasporic ties as significant factors influencing migration patterns in Libya.
Overall, half of the migrants in Libya were from sub-Saharan Africa (49%), over two in five were from North Africa (43%), and a minority were from the Middle East (4%) or Asia (4%).
