• Speech by High Representative/Vice-President Federica #Mogherini at the European Parliament plenary session on the Progress on the UN Global Compact for safe, regular and orderly migration and UN Global Compact on refugees

    Let me start with a good news, a good story for once; a little, big European achievement of the last few months. You might remember, last December I came to Strasbourg and here, in this hemicycle we talked about detention centres in Libya. I took in front of you, and most of all, in front of all those people who are suffering inside these detention centres in Libya, the commitment to bring back to their homes 15.000 migrants from within the detention centres to their countries or origin, in a safe manner with Assisted Voluntary Returns, made with our assistance, through the IOM [International Organisation for Migration].

    At that moment we had just reached an unprecedented agreement between our European Union, the African Union, and the United Nations, in particular the United Nations’ agencies for migrants and refugees – at our EU-Africa Union Summit in Abidjan. Thanks to this agreement, in the first two months of this year – so January and February - we managed to rescue and free more than 16.000 people from the camps in Libya. In two months, we managed to achieve more than in the previous year and already in 2017, the results were ten times better than the previous year.

    Now, in the detention camps, there are still some 4.000 to 5.000 people. It is far too much and we are going to continue our work with the United Nations and with the African Union to empty the camps. We have managed to bring out from there 16.000 people in two months, I believe we can make it and empty them completely, within the, at maximum, coming next couple of months.

    This has been possible for one reason: we joined forces – first of all within Europe, second with our African partners and friends, and on a global scale, within the UN system. I am glad to start with this positive note - while acknowledging that there is still work to be done -because sometimes we forget to focus on the achievements we managed to build. I think the achievements are important to lead us towards the solution.

    https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/41272/speech-high-representativevice-president-federica-mogherini-european-par
    #Libye #camps #centres_de_détention #détention #asile #migrations #réfugiés #vide #plein

    Commentaire de Marie Martin via la mailing list Migreurop :

    No resettlement from Libya to the EU was mentioned, if anyone has information on this it will be welcome

    #réinstallation

    @reka :
    ça rentre aussi peut-être dans tes réflexions sur la #géographie_du_vide et #géographie_du_plein