Under a UN-affiliated “voluntary return” program for irregular migrants, Libyan authorities deported around 150 Nigerian women and children on Tuesday, says UN sources and an immigration officer.
On the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, Libya serves as a major entry point for migrants, primarily from other African countries, who attempt perilous sea journeys in the hopes of arriving in Europe.
All of the migrants deported on Tuesday were Nigerian “women accompanied by children,” Libya’s migration agency’s Mohamad Baredaa told AFP.
The group consisted of 160 women and 17 children, according to sources at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the UN agency in charge of the repatriation program.
They were dressed primarily in black tracksuits and assembled at a waiting area in a detention centre in Tripoli before being transported by bus to the airport in Mitiga, the capital of Libya.
Several additional repatriation flights carrying groups of migrants from Bangladesh, Gambian, and Mali were scheduled to depart this week from Mitiga and an airport in Benghazi, the east of the country.
The violence and instability in Libya since the overthrow and assassination of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011 contributed to the country becoming a breeding ground for human traffickers, who have long been accused of abuses.
READ ALSO:Â Diezani in Desperate Bid to Reclaim Seized Assets, Sues EFCC
The IOM estimates that there are over 700,000 migrants in Libya.
But according to Libyan officials, the real number is far higher.
This week, Imad Trabelsi, the interior minister of Libya’s UN-recognized government in Tripoli, suggested that there may be “more than four million migrants” in the nation, although he acknowledged that precise numbers were impossible to determine because many of them had proper documentation.
Trabelsi stated Monday that the nation “will not bear the burden of illegal immigration alone and will not become a settlement zone” in an attempt to allay Libyans’ fears.
