ADDIS ABABA, Jan. 26 (Xinhua) -- The African Union (AU) said on Friday that some 12,708 African immigrants have been repatriated to their home countries from Libya since late November.
According to the pan African block, the African migrants have been repatriated since the fifth African Union-European Union (AU-EU) summit held on November 29-30, 2017 in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire.
Close to 4,000 of the migrants were repatriated by respective AU member countries, while the reaming were brought home with the help of the International Organization for Migrants (IOM), said AU Commissioner for Social Affairs Amira Elfadil Mohammed to journalists on the sidelines of the 30th AU summit, which is underway from Jan. 22 to 29 at the AU headquarters in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa.
According to Mohammed, an estimated 700,000 African migrants are currently in the troubled North African country, most of whom are legal migrants who had entered to the country before the collapse of Libya's former leader Muammar Gaddafi back in 2012.
The commissioner stressed that the complicated situation in Libya is creating havoc as some of the 54 detention centers that are operational in Libya are not controlled by Libyan authorities.
According to Mohammed, some of the detention centers are controlled by armed militias and criminal groups.
She also revealed that the migrants, who are from 30 African member states, are victims of smugglers who have networks in almost all affected countries.
The European Union (EU) has allocated 100 million euros to the repatriation process under the framework of a tripartite mechanism established by the AU, EU and IOM, according to Mohammed.
African migrants reportedly faced slavery threats in Libya, where stranded African migrants were sold as slaves for as little as 400 U.S. dollars.
