Scandinavia will help African refugees

In September, Rwanda signed a deal with the United Nations and African Union which aims to help to resettle people who were detained in Libya after trying to reach Europe by sea. The transit centre was established in a village Gashora, near Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, as part of UNHCR’s Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM).

Recently, Norway announced that they would receive 600 people during 2020 and Sweden already took seven people. They are refugees who were evacuated from detention centres in Libya to Rwanda, and now they will be taken in Norway. Many of them are from Horn of Africa nations, according to the Associated Press (AP). 

In recent months, humanitarian organizations criticized the inhuman conditions suffered by people detained in refugee camps in Libya. There are over 4,000 people trapped in Libyan detention camps. In March, Amnesty International in a press release said: “Europe’s shameful failure to end the torture and abuse of refugees and migrants in Libya,” and reported that most of people held in Libya’s detention centres had been intercepted at sea by the Libyan coastguard,“which has enjoyed all kind of support from European governments”. 

The aim of the Norwegian government is “to send a signal that we will not back smuggling routes and cynical backers” said Norwegian Justice and Immigration Minister Joaran Kallmyr in a statement to AP.  Instead of that, they prefer bringing in people “with protection needs in an organized form,” he added.