Tunisia and Libya announced Thursday, August 10 that they had agreed to share the reception of sub-Saharan African migrants stranded, some for a month, near the Ras Jedir border post, after being taken there by the Tunisian police, according to multiple testimonies.
During a meeting between the interior ministers of the two countries in Tunis on Wednesday, “we agreed to share the groups of migrants present on the border”, confirmed to Agence france-Presse (AFP) a spokesman for the Tunisian ministry.
About three hundred migrants from sub-Saharan Africa were still stranded in recent days in very precarious conditions on a strip of land by the sea, in the buffer zone of Ras Jedir, humanitarian sources told AFP. “Tunisia will take care of a group of 76 men, 42 women and 8 children,” Tunisian spokesman Faker Bouzghaya said.
It was the Libyan Interior Ministry which first announced overnight the conclusion of a bilateral agreement “for a consensual solution, in order to put an end to the crisis of irregular migrants stranded in the border area”. On the Tunisian side, the official communiqué limited itself to announcing that Tunisian Minister Kamel Feki had received his Libyan counterpart, Imed Trabelsi, stressing the need for “coordination of efforts to find solutions that take into account the interests of both countries”. .
The agreement provides that the Libyans will take care of the rest of the stranded migrants, from 150 to 200 people. “The transfer of the group took place yesterday [Wednesday] to reception centers in Tataouine and Medenine with the participation of the Tunisian Red Crescent (CRT), Bouzghaya added.
In a new statement on Thursday, the Libyan ministry announced that “there are no longer any irregular migrants in the border area” after the bilateral agreement. “Patrols are organized in coordination” between the two countries to “secure the border”.
Without food or water
Up to 350 people have been stranded in Ras Jedir, including 12 pregnant women and 65 children and minors, according to humanitarian sources and according to which the main aid (food, water, medical care) has been brought to them since the July 20 by the Libyan Red Crescent with the support of UN agencies.
After the death on July 3 of a Tunisian in a brawl with migrants in Sfax, the epicenter of illegal emigration in Tunisia, “at least 2,000 sub-Saharan nationals” were “expelled” by Tunisian security forces and deposited in inhospitable areas on the Libyan, Tunisian and Algerian borders, had reported several humanitarian sources to AFP.
On July 12, the CRT sheltered around 630 people recovered from Ras Jedir, according to NGOs. It also took care of around 200 others, initially deported to Algeria. But in the following weeks, various media including AFP documented with testimonies from migrants, Libyan border guards and NGOs, that more than 350 migrants were still in Ras Jedir.
Hundreds of other migrants are also pouring into Libya from Tunisia at Al’Assah, 40 kilometers south of Ras Jedir, wandering without food or water until Libyan guards come to them. relief, noted an AFP team in early August.
The UN denounced, on August 1 from its headquarters in New York, “the expulsion of migrants from Tunisia to Libya”, calling for “the expulsions to cease immediately”. The Tunisian authorities refuted two days later “the allegations of expulsions”, citing “inaccuracies or even untruths”.
Since early July, “at least 27 migrants” have died in this desert and “73 are missing,” the source said. Libya, which has more than 600,000 migrants on its soil, has been singled out by several UN reports on serious violence against them.
