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Rwanda: Third group of refugees arrive from Libya

A third group of refugees evacuated from detention centres in Libya have arrived in Rwanda.

With the help of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), Rwanda has welcomed 116 vulnerable refugees, including several babies, the agency said on Monday. The group mostly consists of refugees from Eritrea, with smaller numbers from Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan.

The group arrived at Kigali International Airport on Sunday night from an evacuation flight organised by UNHCR. The agency says around two-thirds of the group are under the age of 18 years old, the vast majority of whom have been separated from their parents and wider families.

UNHCR expressed gratitude for the support it received in the latest evacuation.

UNHCR is grateful for support of Libyan, Rwandan and Nigerien authorities, and from the African Union, through the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM), it said in a statement on Monday. UNHCR also welcomes the recent donation of US$10 million from the European Union towards the Rwanda ETM, helping us move more vulnerable refugees out of Libya and to safety.

However, UNHCR Special Envoy for the Central Mediterranean, Vincent Cochetel, says the growing need to evacuate refugees from Syria means UNHCR needs the help of supporting countries to get them out.

As violence in Tripoli intensifies, these evacuations have never been more urgent, he was quoted as saying in the statement. But with thousands of refugees still at risk in detention centres and urban areas in Libya, we need states to help us get more refugees out of the country much more quickly.

UNHCR says around 4,500 refugees and asylum seekers continue to be held in detention centres in Libya, including people newly-detained people who have been intercepted or rescued by the Libyan Coast Guard.

Featured image: By UNHCR http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5518123

Aaron Brooks is a UK journalist who wants to cut out the international agendas in news. Spending his early years in both England and Northern Ireland he saw the difference between reality and media coverage at an early age. After graduating from the University of Chester with a BA in journalism, his travels revealed just how large the gap between news and the real world can be. As Editor-in-Chief at East Africa Monitor, its his job to provide a balanced view of whats going on in the region for English-speaking audiences.View all posts by Aaron Brooks

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Rwanda: Third group of refugees arrive from Libya - East Africa Monitor

Wed, Nov 20, 2019

MENASourcebyKarim Mezran

People queue to sign up at a bank for a $500 annual allowance that provides a lifeline for many Libyan families struggling to make ends meet in Tripoli, Libya October 17, 2019. Picture taken October 17, 2019. REUTERS/Ismail Zitouny

On September 11, 2019, Germanysambassador to Tripoli announcedthat in October or November, Berlin would host a conference on Libya to try tostabilize the situation in the country and bring relief to a population deeply affectedby the military action of field marshal Khalifa Haftar.

This past spring, Haftar, launchedan attack on the capital Tripoli with the Libyan National Army (LNA) under thepretext of freeing it from terrorists. This conference would be organized incollaboration with the United Nations Special Envoy for Libya, Ghassan Salam.He seems to believe that Germany could represent a neutral actor among the foreignactors intervention; who are seeking resources and international prestige onLibyan soil for years. But looking at recent history, there are severalcriticisms that this is not the best approach. In recent years, conferences onLibya held in other countries with extremely limited local representation havedone nothing but exacerbate tensions and make the situation worse.

French PresidentEmmanuel Macron has tried to create a new order in Libya, sponsoring manydiplomaticunofficial and officialengagements. He hosted two conferences inParis, the firston July 25, 2017 between Prime Minister Fayezal-Sarraj and Marshal Khalifa Haftar. A ceasefire was agreed upon, andelections were promised to be held as soon as possible. A second eventtook place in Paris on May 29, 2018, with the proposal of scheduling election dayon December 10 of that year.

In response, Italyunderthe initiative of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conteorganized another conferencein Palermo on November 13-14, 2018. Then, in February 2019, another conferenceheld in Abu Dhabi produced an agreement to hold elections. None of these agreementsor proposals were realized. Instead, everyone in Libya seemed to be completelyunsatisfied: the militia leaders excluded from the negotiating table fought inthe capital between August and September 2018; Haftar started a new war inApril 2019 against the same militias in Tripoli; Sarraj felt profoundlydisappointed by his antagonist refusing to sit at the same table. Those mostimpacted by the failed negotiations are the Libyan people who cannot find the necessarystability to begin to rebuild their country. These international conferences didnot bring about any effective resolutions of the conflict, creating onlydisappointment among the citizens.

There is however, a different type ofmeeting that is much more productive. On December 6-8, 2017 the Swiss Centerfor Humanitarian Dialogue (HD) succeeded in organizing a meetingof Libyan mayors in Tunisia. For the firsttime since the conflict began, almost all Libyan municipalities and localauthorities gathered to discuss how to end the ongoing violence in theircountry. This important eventsaw the active presence of the UN representative Ghassan Salam. The meeting wasa success and built an important foundation for a potential National Conference,which should have included the main representatives of Libyas three regions:Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan.

Municipalities continuedto walk on this path, with a seriesof gatherings at the beginning of 2018 not only in Tunis, but also inShahat in January and Tripoliin March. Around 107 local leaders, including those coming from Libyas eastattended the meetings. Local leaders asked for the non-intervention of foreignactors: they wanted to be left alone in trying to rebuild their own country.

Local leaders asked for the non-intervention of foreign actors: they wanted to be left alone in trying to rebuild their own country.

Municipalities in most of Libyaexcept forthose in the eastern province where mayors and city councils have been replacedby military governments per Haftars ordershave resisted the ongoing violence overthe years and proved to be key institutions of the country. For this reason they must be reinforced.

Given the success of theHD initiative, Mr. Salam, at the beginning of 2018, asked HD to manage thepreparatory process for the National Conference, one of the foundations of theUN Action Plan for Libya. With that target, the HD opened up consultations,which were attended in forty-three locations by more than 7,000 Libyans.

It is important toremember the basis for Germanys proposal for a new international conference,lies in the strong relationship Berlin has with Turkey and Egypt that must notbe undervalued, given the fact that these two nations are each supporting Sarrajand Haftar respectively.

In the meantime, a LibyaLocal Governance Forum was held on September 14-16 in Tunis in order to improvea strategic approach to localism. The event was supported by USAID, the World Bank,and UNDP Libya. The media did not talk extensively about it, but it would beinteresting to understand how many local administrators were present and fromwhich region of Libya.

As many scholars andspecialists on Libya agreed a few months ago in a Brookingsreport on Libya, the model implemented in the country should be created byand for Libyans, building the state from the grassroots up, rather thantop down. In this context, there is no place for external intrusion norfor conferences that do not have the full participation of the Libyans ofTripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan. Mr. Salam remainsoptimistic about the forthcoming Berlin conference despite an escalation inaerial fighting in Libya, but it is necessary toremember that conferences cannot be held without those who actually have a roleand a stake at the local level. A simple theorem, but evidently very difficultto put into practice.

Karim Mezran is a resident seniorfellow at the Atlantic Councils Middle East programs.

Federica Saini Fasanotti is a nonresident senior fellow in theCenter for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, of theForeign Policyprogram at The Brookings Institution.

Thu, Sep 19, 2019

One of the unfortunate consequences of Libyas crisis is that the main players with decision-making power in Libyas conflict are the regional and international powers involved in the crisis.

MENASourcebyKarim Mezran

Wed, Nov 7, 2018

The approachingconference on Libyan stabilization hosted by Italywhich will be held on November 12 and 13 in Palermowill bring together the main Libyan leaders, with the purpose of defining their respective negotiation platforms in advance. Italy must not only navigate the components of Libyas heterogeneous and conflicting political landscape, but also host the most relevant regional and global actors.

MENASourcebyNicola Pedde

Fri, May 31, 2019

The forces of Libyas rebel army officer Khalifa Haftar are on the outskirts of Tripoli, the capital of Libya, in his ongoing bid to claim the city. Some of his forces traveled more than 1,000 kilometers from Libyas eastern towns where Haftar has his stronghold.

MENASourcebyBorzou Daragahi

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Another conference, another incomplete solution for Libya - Atlantic Council

No valid statistical link exists between the likelihood that migrants will be rescued at sea and the number of attempted Mediterranean crossings, a study has found. The findings challenge the widespread claim in Europe that NGO search and rescue activity has been a pull factor for migrants.

Fear that the NGOs missions attract immigrants has been the basis for measures restricting humanitarian ships including requiring them to sign up to codes of conduct or simply blocking them from leaving port.

It is the first detailed study of NGOs proactive search and rescue activity between 2014 and October 2019, but the findings focus most closely on the first nine months of this year, a period when Europe had withdrawn from all search and rescue activity leaving only NGOs or the Libyan guard. The research was undertaken by two Italian researchers, Eugenio Cusumano and Matteo Villa, from the European University Institute

Drawing on official statistics and examining three-day averages, the study showed the numbers rescued depend on the numbers leaving. It found a stronger link this year between the number of migrant crossings and either political stability in Libya or the weather, rather than NGO ships at sea.

The study found that in 2015, the total number of departures from Libya slightly decreased relative to 2014 even though migrants rescued by NGOs increased from 0.8 to 13% of the total number of people rescued at sea. After July 2017, the number of migrants departing from Libya plummeted even though NGOs had become far and away the largest provider of search and rescue by far.

It also found that in the 85 days in which the NGOs were present in the search and rescue mission there were no more departures than the 225 days in which there were Libyan patrol boats.

Instead, the study showed the big decline in crossings in 2017 was linked to the deal struck between the Italian government and various Libyan militia to keep migrants from attempting sea crossings.

The study looks at figures from the International Organisation for Migration, the UN refugee agency UNHCR and the Italian coastguard.

Over the five years the humanitarian ships have rescued a total of 115,000 migrants out of 650,000 with an average of 18%. In 2019 alone, at least 1,078 migrants have died or gone missing, according to the UN, while trying to reach safety in Europe.

While the EU recognises the Libyan coastguard and is also funding and training its work, there is no overall agreement about how asylum seekers should be dealt with in an equitable and EU-wide manner.

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Migrants from Libya not driven by hope of being rescued at sea study - The Guardian

MEPs of the Civil Liberties Committee, the Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Delegation for relations with Maghreb countries will assess the conditions facing migrants in Libya against the backdrop of the general situation in the country, with representatives of the European External Action Service and the European Commission.

In a second session, they will delve into what is happening in detention centres and analyse the procedures used by the Libyan coastguard when returning migrants rescued at sea, based on testimonies from representatives of UNHCR, IOM, Mdecins sans Frontires and the International Rescue Committee.

Background

According to UNHCR, Libya hosts over 45,000 registered refugees and asylum-seekers, in addition to hundreds of thousands of people displaced internally due to the violence and instability in the country, and unregistered, mostly African, migrants. More than 4,400 refugees and migrants are currently held in detention centres, on occasion targeted by deadly airstrikes.

So far in 2019, the IOM estimates that 9,944 people reached Italy from Libya, while 695 persons died attempting the crossing and 8,309 were returned to the country.

Within the framework of the AU-EU-UN Taskforce, the EU is contributing to the UN agencies efforts to move people out of Libya. Since September 2017, over 4,000 people have been evacuated, mostly to Niger (to await further resettlement) but also to Italy, Romania and lately to Rwanda.

When: Thursday, 21 November, from 9.00 to 11.30

Where: European Parliament in Brussels, Antall building, room 2Q2

You can follow the hearing live.

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Libya: MEPs to assess situation at detention centres and role of coastguard | News - EU News

Crown witness Diederik J. Vandewalle is seen at the Palais de Justice in Montreal on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2019.Dave Sidaway / jpg

One way to understand Libya under dictator Moammar Gadhafis regime, a former SNC-Lavalin executives fraud trial heard Wednesday, is to think of the country as being like the Mafia: unofficial rules governed the economy and everyone knew who not to cross.

I think its actually a very good description of what Libya was, said Diederik Vandewalle, a Dartmouth College professor and expert on modern Libya, during former executive Sami Bebawis fraud and corruption trial.

There were no real institutional rules, no checks and balances, Vandewalle said, and it was very well understood that if you transgressed what Gadhafi wanted, some dire consequences would follow.

Vandewalle explained how, at the time SNC-Lavalin was expanding its business in the country, Gadhafi and his children decided which economic projects moved forward and intermediaries often extracted bribes from foreign companies seeking contracts.

Bebawi, 73, faces charges of fraud and bribing a foreign public official in Libya. The Crown argues the firm paid a series of bribes and kickbacks to Gadhafis son, Saadi, in order to keep receiving lucrative contracts. It contends Bebawi pocketed $26 million through its dealings in the country.

The trial has heard how former executive Riadh Ben Aissa reached out to Saadi Gadhafi when the company was losing money on a contract. It had filed a claim to recoup its losses but wasnt making any progress.

Ben Aissa told jurors he was pressured by Bebawi to settle the claim at any costs necessary, which he says led him to take a political route. The jury has seen how, after the claim was settled, $25 million Deutsche Mark was transferred to what the Crown argues was a shell company set up by Ben Aissa.

That money was divided between Saadi Gadhafi, Bebawi and Ben Aissa, the Crown says.

Vandewalle, called to testify by the Crown, gave jurors a brief overview of Libyas history on Wednesday.

He described Libya as a kleptocracy where those at the top of the political system skim off money for their own profit and take whatever they need irrespective of whatever the impact is on the country.

He explained how the country was one of the poorest in the world following the Second World War, with a per capita income of $25 per person. But that changed when oil was discovered in 1959, he said, with the per capita income rising to $2,000 per person by the time the Gadhafi regime took over 10 years later.

International and United States sanctions later pushed the countrys economy into dire shape before the sanctions were lifted in the early 2000s.

By then, Vandewalle said, Gadhafis children had become powerhouses in a rebuilding economy.

They were very powerful, Vandewalle said. They became these intermediaries and gatekeepers, in a sense. They were the ones that brokered the power. They were able to decide whether or not and under what conditions a particular contract would move forward.

The trial continues Thursday.

jfeith@postmedia.com

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SNC-Lavalin: Libya was 'like the Mafia,' former executive's trial told - Montreal Gazette