...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn...
have returned home on the first voluntary migrant repatriation flight from Libya since the coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)
...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...pandemic began, the UN migration agency said Friday.
Most of the 118 passengers on the charter flight from the Libyan capital to Accra were male migrant workers, but seven women, three children and two infants were also onboard, the International Organization for Migration said.
"Many of them had been working in Libya for years," IOM spokeswoman Safa Msehli told news hounds at the United Nations
...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense...
in Geneva.
"Others had arrived in the past few years but due to the severity of the conflict and the COVID-19 situation, they found themselves out of jobs, out of income, were stranded and have decided to go home."
Some had been sleeping on the streets and were provided with shelter during the five-month halt to the IOM's voluntary humanitarian return programme.
At least 2,300 people in Libya have registered for the programme. A repatriation flight to Bangladesh is planned for September, while one due to fly to Mali next week has been put on hold due to the coup in the west African country.
The scheme is "a critical lifeline for
In the first quarter of 2020, it helped 1,466 stranded
Last year, nearly 9,800 people returned to 34 countries across Africa and Asia.
- MIGRATION ROUTE -
Libya has been in chaos ever since the 2011 overthrow and killing of leader Moamer Qadaffy in a NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants...
-backed uprising, though its warring rival administrations said Friday that they would cease all hostilities and organise nationwide elections soon.
And since the ousting of Qadaffy, Libya has become a key route for irregular migration from Africa into Europe, across the Mediterranean Sea.
At least 45
The 37 rescued survivors were mainly from Senegal
... a nation of about 14 million on the west coast of Africa bordering Mauretania to the north, Mali to the east, and a pair of Guineas to the south, one of them Bissau. It is 90 percent Mohammedan and has more than 80 political parties. Its primary purpose seems to be absorbing refugees...
, Mali, Chad and Ghana.
The latest tragedy brings to 302 the known number of
"The insecurity at the border and the lack of monitoring at the border does not allow us to have a clear idea of how many people are making their way into Libya, or how many people attempt to cross the Mediterranean," said Msehli.
"We did see many cases where hundreds of