Doctors Without Borders Calls on EU to Suspend Financial Support to Libyan Coast Guard

Migrants are brought to shore after being intercepted by the Libyan coast guard on the Mediterranean Sea, in Garaboli Libya, on Oct. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Yousef Murad, File)
Migrants are brought to shore after being intercepted by the Libyan coast guard on the Mediterranean Sea, in Garaboli Libya, on Oct. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Yousef Murad, File)
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Doctors Without Borders Calls on EU to Suspend Financial Support to Libyan Coast Guard

Migrants are brought to shore after being intercepted by the Libyan coast guard on the Mediterranean Sea, in Garaboli Libya, on Oct. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Yousef Murad, File)
Migrants are brought to shore after being intercepted by the Libyan coast guard on the Mediterranean Sea, in Garaboli Libya, on Oct. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Yousef Murad, File)

The humanitarian aid group Doctors Without Border (MSF) has called on the European Union (EU) and its member states to immediately suspend financial and material support to the Libyan Coast Guard that deliberately endangered the lives of hundreds of people seeking safety.

In a statement on Wednesday, MSF said its team witnessed a pushback by the EU-funded Libyan Coast Guard in international waters last Friday.

Despite MSF’s offer to provide assistance and bring the people to a place of safety, Maltese authorities and Frontex coordinated with a Libyan Coast Guard patrol vessel to intercept and forcibly return over 100 people to Libya, the aid group explained.
It added that the following day, another Libyan Coast Guard patrol vessel aggressively obstructed MSF rescue operations for over two hours, putting at risk the lives of 146 people in distress on a wooden boat in international waters.

“MSF calls on the EU and its member states to immediately suspend financial and material support to the Libyan Coast Guard and stop intentionally fueling the forced returns of people to Libya,” the group said in the statement.

“How long will the EU leaders continue to actively fuel horrific human right abuses at its borders?” asked MSF search and rescue representative Juan Matias Gil.

“Not only must the EU and its member states immediately stop all support to the Libyan Coast Guard, but it must also investigate the responsibility of their coastal states, in this case Malta, and its border agency, Frontex, in the unlawful pushbacks occurring almost daily in the central Mediterranean Sea, thereby making them complicit in grave human rights violations,” he said.

Gil noted that over the weekend of March 16-17, MSF team on board the rescue vessel Geo Barents witnessed two violent incidents involving the EU funded Libyan Coast Guard that deliberately endangered the lives of hundreds of people seeking safety.

Human Rights Watch’s associate Europe and Central Asia director, Judith Sunderland, had earlier said that “recent incidents show how wrong it is for EU countries to entrust the lives of those in need of rescue to Libyan coast guard forces when there are safer alternatives.”

Sunderland also said the “EU should ensure that its vessels carry out robust search-and-rescue operations in international waters close to Libya, where most shipwrecks occur, and, where possible, Italy should direct vessels from the EU and nongovernmental groups to take the lead on rescues, instead of Libyan vessels.”



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.