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Executive Summary for November 13th

We review the latest refugee-related issues, including 25 refugees being evacuated by the U.N. from Libya, a report showing that E.U. states use trafficking laws against human rights volunteers and PNG set to start forcible removals from Manus Island detention center.

Published on Nov. 13, 2017 Read time Approx. 3 minutes

U.N. Undertakes First Evacuation of Refugees From Libya

A group of refugees have been evacuated from Libya to Niger in the first operation of its kind. Twenty-five individuals were moved by the U.N. refugee agency from Tripoli to Niamey on November 12.

UNHCR has registered some 43,000 refugees, including more than 20,000 Syrians, but it remains unclear how many of them remain in Libya.

UNHCR is hoping to open what it calls a transit center in the Libyan capital early next year where it will run checks on refugee claimants before moving them to neighboring Niger. Security at the center, in a city rife with competing militias and human rights abuses, is to be provided by Nepalese soldiers with a limited operational mandate.

“We hope to be able to carry out more evacuations in the near future,” said Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR’s special envoy for the Central Mediterranean. But he said the scheme would remain “limited in scale” as long as commitments to resettle refugees remained “insufficient.”

An increase in the number of evacuations will be contingent on a coalition of the willing among E.U. members agreeing to accept asylum seekers processed in the Niger camps. Otherwise refugees face trading the insecurity and uncertainty of Libya for a life warehoused in a camp in Niger.

Tens of thousands of refugees and migrants have been trapped in northern Libya after militias connected to smuggling networks began stopping sea crossings in July.

A weeks-long battle for the main smuggling port of Sabratha overturned the existing power structures, driving out militia reported to have made deals with Italy and the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli.

European Volunteers Who Helped Refugees Targeted by Trafficking Laws

Aid workers and volunteers are being targeted by E.U. states under trafficking laws. A new report documents 26 cases in which humanitarian actions have been criminalized.

A six-month investigation by the London-based Institute of Race Relations (IRR) found 45 people in 26 cases had been prosecuted under laws designed to combat smuggling and trafficking of people.

The IRR has written a letter to the European Commission denouncing what it calls the “gulf between law and morality” in the policies of E.U. member states.

The prosecutions highlighted include that of a Swiss woman dubbed “Mother Teresa” for her work with refugees on the Italian border; a former British soldier who tried to help an Afghan child reach relatives in the U.K.; and three British and French volunteers arrested for distributing food to migrants.

“Across the continent, criminal laws designed to target organized smuggling gangs and profiteers are distorted and stretched to fit an anti-refugee, anti-humanitarian agenda, and in the process criminalize decency itself,” said Frances Webber from the IRR.

In addition to the IRR cases, a number of European politicians have called for search and rescue charities operating in the Mediterranean to be closed down or prosecuted.

PNG to Forcibly Remove Men Barricaded Into Defunct Manus Center

Asylum seekers barricaded into a defunct Australian-run detention center face being forcibly removed. Authorities in Papua New Guinea were expected to expel remaining Manus inmates on November 13.

A PNG minister said that some 450 men still inside the facility after 13 days without regular food or water would be removed. The asylum seekers have been warehoused on PNG for years as part of a policy designed to deter refugees and migrants from trying to reach Australia by boat.

Over the weekend Peter Dutton, Australia’s immigration minister, blamed the standoff on a group of “core agitators, organizers, who will try and provide some sort of scene.”

Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani, a prominent member of the Manus group said: “We are not doing anything wrong. We are only resisting peacefully. We are asking again for freedom in a safe third country.”

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