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UNHCR: Libya fears return of Touareg fighters from Mali

Arab World Materials 23 January 2013 06:18 (UTC +04:00)
The conflict in Mali has prompted a surge of Tuaregs into Libya, making it hard to distinguish between civilians fleeing the conflict and combatants, a senior official of the United Nations refugee organization told dpa in an interview this week.
UNHCR: Libya fears return of Touareg fighters from Mali

The conflict in Mali has prompted a surge of Tuaregs into Libya, making it hard to distinguish between civilians fleeing the conflict and combatants, a senior official of the United Nations refugee organization told dpa in an interview this week.

Emmanuel Gignac, who heads the UNHCR mission to Libya, said locals feared a return of Tuaregs who had fought under the regime of former president Moamer Gaddafi and had since joined the separatist movement in Mali.

He said the distinction between combatants and civilians, who may need protection, was "not quickly understood" in Libya, where various brigades haphazardly control the southern border region in the absence of national oversight from Tripoli.

While it is normal for the Tuaregs - a nomadic tribe whose homeland spans the Sahel region of Libya, Algeria, Mali and Niger - to come and go across borders, Gignac said their recent influx to Libya is "not a normal flow."

Given the lack of border controls, and Tuareg reliance on kinship rather than organizations such as the UNHCR, reliable figures are hard to come by, limiting assessments of people movements to largely anecdotal evidence.

Nevertheless, the issue highlights Libya's difficulty in controlling its porous borders, which span thousands of kilometres of desert, as the country completes its transition process to a functioning state following Gaddafi's ouster in late 2011.

"The borders are left unguarded - which is an issue, and they are aware of it," Gignac said. Besides migrants, many of whom were being smuggled, "you have drugs, you have illicit goods or assets, including potentially weapons," he added.

This includes many weapons that reached Mali, fuelling the conflict there.

During Gignac's visit to Brussels this week, a leading European Union official said that the bloc was preparing a civilian mission to help Libya better secure its borders.

While the need was clear, the EU was wary of stepping into the situation like "an elephant in a porcelain shop," the official said on condition of anonymity, noting that neighbouring countries had been consulted.

The UNHCR, which was recognized under Gaddafi, has not yet been formally accepted by Tripoli's new authorities, who fear in part that granting the body full legal recognition will cement Libya's status as a migrant destination.

"They tend to think that they are more a transit country," Gignac said, adding however that Libya's oil sector would see it "mushroom into a fairly wealthy economy" and become increasingly attractive again to migrants.

At present, the majority of migrants in Libya are Somalis and Eritreans, the UNHCR official said, noting however that the country is now home to an estimated 100,000 Syrians, driven out by the conflict at home.

"A lot of (Syrian) people are going to Libya because they feel it's safer for them," Gignac said. "The Libyan government is, for them, the result of what they are fighting for. They see, in the Libyan government, their dreams in a sense."

But migrants reaching Libya face an uncertain fate at the hands of the disparate groups controlling the border, said Gignac, who has been based in Tripoli since September 2011.

When UNHCR resumed visits to detention centres a year ago, he said there was a chaotic "mosaic of situations" operated by different local brigades, ranging from Gaddafi-era refugee centres to ad-hoc camps to park people who were arrested.

"The little we monitored was frightening, and we probably didn't have access to the worst ones," he said, describing a lack of healthcare, drinking water or food as well as mistreatment and punishment for those trying to escape.

Since then, Gignac said, "things have evolved and improved," noting a "clear intention and willingness by the authorities to tackle this issue."

"The problem is that they have a long way to go," he added.

"You need to have people trained, you need infrastructures that are adequate to receive these populations - first and foremost you need to have a policy, a legal framework," the official said.

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