New Maritime Trade Route to Connect Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Spain

The Tunisian authorities have recently shown great interest in all types of maritime transport. (Diwan of Maritime and Commercial Ports)
The Tunisian authorities have recently shown great interest in all types of maritime transport. (Diwan of Maritime and Commercial Ports)
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New Maritime Trade Route to Connect Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Spain

The Tunisian authorities have recently shown great interest in all types of maritime transport. (Diwan of Maritime and Commercial Ports)
The Tunisian authorities have recently shown great interest in all types of maritime transport. (Diwan of Maritime and Commercial Ports)

Trade between Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, and Spain is set to receive a boost from a new maritime trade route that is slated to open in March.

The route will be dedicated specifically to container transportation and will link the port of Sfax with destinations in Morocco, Spain, and Libya.

Malek Aloui, the spokesperson for this new maritime venture, disclosed in an interview with TAP that final preparations on both administrative and logistical fronts are rapidly nearing completion.

Travel to Morocco will be accomplished in just four days, while voyages to Spain will take a mere six days. Departures from Sfax will occur twice a month, promising increased connectivity for businesses, he added.

Experts said that this new route would witness a remarkable success given the significant commercial ties that bring these countries together, and their relatively distant location from the commercial paralysis in the Red Sea.

The current maritime shipment turmoil and the Russian war crisis could also benefit the new route, the experts added.

The route avoids passing through Algeria which hints at the limited commercial ties between Tunisia and Libya on one hand and Algeria on the other.

The Tunisian Ministry of Transport stated that this route is part of a strategy to reinforce Tunisia as a maritime commercial hub in the Mediterranean Sea.

The trade volume between Tunisia and Libya reached $970 million in 2022 and between Morocco and Tunisia $215.7 million in 2021. Trade between Tunisia and Spain totaled 1.9 billion euros (exports and imports) in 2022, recording a 27 percent increase in imports and 36 percent in exports.



UN: More Than One Million Syrians Returned to Their Homes Since Assad’s Fall 

A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)
A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)
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UN: More Than One Million Syrians Returned to Their Homes Since Assad’s Fall 

A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)
A boy looks out from inside a tent in al-Roj camp, Syria, on January 10, 2020. (Reuters)

More than one million people have returned to their homes in Syria after the overthrow of Bashar Al-Assad on Dec. 8, including 800,000 people displaced inside the country and 280,000 refugees who came back from abroad, the UN said on Tuesday.

“Since the fall of the regime in Syria, we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, wrote on the X social media platform.

“Early recovery efforts must be bolder and faster, though otherwise people will leave again: this is now urgent!” he said.

Last January, the UN's high commissioner for refugees urged the international community to back Syria's reconstruction efforts to facilitate the return of millions of refugees.

“Lift the sanctions, open up space for reconstruction. If we don't do it now at the beginning of the transition, we waste a lot of time,” Grandi told a press conference in Ankara, after returning from a trip in Lebanon and Syria.

At a meeting in mid-February, some 20 countries, including Arab nations, Türkiye, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan agreed at the close of a conference in Paris to “work together to ensure the success of the transition in a process led by Syria.”

The meeting's final statement also pledged support for Syria's new authorities in the fight against “all forms of terrorism and extremism.”

Meanwhile, AFP reported on Tuesday that displaced people are returning to their neighborhoods in Homs, where rebels first took up arms to fight Assad's crackdown on protests in 2011, only to find them in ruins.

In Homs, the Syrian military had besieged and bombarded opposition areas such as Baba Amr, where US journalist Marie Colvin was killed in a bombing in 2012.

“The house is burned down, there are no windows, no electricity,” said Duaa Turki at her dilapidated home in Khaldiyeh neighborhood.

“We removed the rubble, laid a carpet” and moved in, said the 30-year-old mother of four.

“Despite the destruction, we're happy to be back. This is our neighborhood and our land.”

Duaa’s husband spends his days looking for a job, she said, while they hope humanitarian workers begin distributing aid to help the family survive.