A joint agreement has been reached between the United Nations (UN), the African Union (AU) the European Union (EU) to put in place a joint EU-AU-UN Task Force “to save and protect lives of migrants and refugees along the routes and in particular inside Libya,” a joint press release said on Friday.
The Task Force will be engage in “accelerating the assisted voluntary returns to countries of origin, and the resettlement of those in need of international protection.”
The agreement on the joint Task Force was announced in a joint press release issued on Friday at the African Union/European Union Summit in Abidjan to discuss concrete steps to address jointly the dramatic situation of migrants and refugees victims of criminal networks, mainly in Libya.
The United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and the High Representative/Vice President Federica Mogherini met Friday morning in the margins of the African Union/European Union Summit.
“This action will build on, expand and accelerate the ongoing work done by countries of origin, and the IOM, with EU funding, which allowed so far the voluntary return to their countries of origin of 13 000 migrants since January,” the joint press release said.
“The work of the Task Force will be closely coordinated with the Libyan authorities and be part of the overall joint work that the African Union and the European Union, and the United Nations, will intensify to dismantle traffickers and criminal networks, and to offer opportunities of development and stability to countries of origin and transit, tackling root causes of migration,” the joint release said.
According to the joint press release, UN, the AU and the EU agreed to “upgrade in a systematic manner their trilateral cooperation and to meet on a regular basis at the highest political level, notably in the margins of the UN General Assembly.”