UN envoy on migrants criticises ‘blindness’ of EU on Libya

The UN’s special envoy on migration in the Mediterranean, Vincent Cochetel, has accused the EU of “blindness” on the plight of refugees and migrants in Libya and called for a rethink of the policy of returning migrants intercepted at sea to the war-torn country after Tuesday night’s airstrike on a migrant detention centre outside Tripoli claimed 44 lives.

This is a tragic event which could have been avoided (as) we had passed on to all parties the GPS coordinates of all the detention camps.

This detention centre is a former military camp. It is totally inappropriate to place people there in arbitrary detention.

We knew there was this risk of attacks one day with the risk of collateral damage, intentional or unintentional, so we had called for the closure of the centre but nobody listened to us.

There is a certain blindness among European countries about the situation of migrants in Libya, which has been deteriorating for months.