A group of 130 asylum seekers from Libya is expected to be received in Rwanda on Tuesday, December 29 as part of government’s commitment to temporarily host Africans who are evacuated from the North African country, after being stranded there. According to the Ministry of Emergency Management (MINEMA), this will be the 5th group to arrive in the country since September 2019 when the process of evacuating them to Rwanda started. The move is in line with the framework of the Emergency Transit Mechanism established through a tripartite agreement between the Government of Rwanda, UNHCR and the African Union. Under the agreement, Rwanda made a commitment to host African refugees trapped in Libya after their desperate efforts to make it to European countries were cut short. Currently, 385 of them have been evacuated to Rwanda and of these, over 200 got resettled in other countries – mainly in Europe. Among the 200, MINEMA says 131 were resettled in Sweden, 23 in Canada, 46 in Norway, and 5 in France. The latest arrivals are expected at Kigali International Airport at around 9pm. “They will be received at the airport around 9PM and then be accompanied to La Palisse Hotel Nyamata from where they will be tested for Covid-19. They will wait for their results from here, and after getting them, they will proceed to the Transit Mechanism in Gashora,” says a statement from MINEMA.
