A total of 95 refugees have been flown to Italy from Libya, including children, female trafficking victims, survivors of torture and violence people with grave health problems, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“The Farnesina is once again in the front line in implementing emergency evacuations of particularly vulnerable people from Libya. And once again, close collaboration between the institutions and civil society is playing a decisive role in the shared goal of freeing refugees arriving from Libyan detention centres”, stated Luigi Vignali, Director General for Migration Policies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
The Libyan refugees arrived at Rome's Fiumicino airport early on Friday aboard a charter flight organised under an agreement with Italy's foreign and interior ministries, the United Nations refugee agency UNCHR, Catholic charity the Community of Sant’Egidio, the Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy (FCEI) and the Tavola Valdese.
The UNHCR charter flight carrying the 95 Libyans to safety in Italy was the third one to have been arranged under the April 2021 accord, the foreign ministry statement noted.
The protocol, which is intended to bring together good practice in emergency evacuations and humanitarian corridors, involves 500 people in total, the statement said.
"Humanitarian corridors from Libya are a concrete response to the needs of particularly vulnerable refugees in a context of prolonged crisis that remains a focus of attention for the institutions," said Francesca Ferrandino, Head of the Civil Liberties and Immigration Department of the Ministry of the Interior.
“We are grateful to Italy for its commitment to taking forward this live-saving operation”, said Chiara Cardoletti, the UNHCR representative for Italy, the Holy See and San Marino.
"It is an important sign of solidarity and humanity," Cardoletti added.
Since 2017, the UNHCR has evacuated or resettled 6,145 refugees and asylum seekers from Libya, of whom 997 in Italy. The evacuations resumed in November 2021 after a one-year break caused by the Libyan authorities’ ban on humanitarian flights.
The UNHCR estimates that in 2023 more that two million. The UNHCR people throughout the world will need resettlement - a 36% increase from 1.47 million this year, the statement noted.
