HIGHLIGHTS OF PRESS CONFERENCE HELD BY UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS AND EMERGENCY RELIEF COORDINATOR

This afternoon Valerie Amos, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator held a press conference on the regional flash appeal that was launched following recent events in Libya. Ms. Amos was joined by Antonio Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and William Lacy Swing, Director General of the International Organization for Migration.

Ms. Amos began by saying that the humanitarian situation in Libya and in neighbouring countries remained extremely worrying. Over 200,000 people had already left Libya, mainly migrant workers returning to their homes. Ms. Amos had just returned from the Tunisia where she reviewed the coordination arrangements in place at the border and looked at what else the UN could do to support the resident coordinator, the UN and other agencies, the government and non-governmental organizations. The efforts of UN agencies and international partners, including Member States, had been scaled up considerably to meet the needs of the over 100,000 people who had thus far transited through Tunisia. A transit camp was up and running on the Tunisian side of the border and while it was basic it did provide some shelter, water and food, including one hot meal per day.

Governments, people and civil society in neighbouring countries had provided significant support for those arriving at their borders and Ms. Amos thanked them on behalf of the UN. Several Member States had been sending planes to fly people out of Tunisia and elsewhere and she thanked all of them as well for that support. More planes and ships were needed to help repatriate everyone.

Much remained to be done especially if the situation continued to deteriorate. The appeal just launched was a common call from aid agencies to ensure there was adequate humanitarian relief and people were transported to their countries of origin promptly. Within opposition controlled parts of Libya, the appeal outlined the funding required to assess, analyze and respond to possible and future humanitarian needs. It covered camp coordination and management, food security, nutrition, healthcare, water sanitation and hygiene, protection, shelter and logistics.

The appeal was based on a short term planning scenario that projected that up to 400,000 people could leave Libya, including the 200,000 that had left to date, and that another 600,000 people inside Libya might need humanitarian aid. This flash appeal spelled out 160 million USD needed to meet a planning objective that spanned three months. It would be revised in 2 weeks to reflect the revolving situation and Ms. Amos said she hoped it would receive a favourable response from governments.

The UN had named a humanitarian coordinator for the Libyan crisis who would work with the UN resident coordinators for Tunisia, Egypt and Niger on operations along Libya’s border; the current director of OCHA Geneva, Mr. Rashid Khalikov, would begin his assignment on Monday.

The situation in and around Libya, as serious as it was, must not overshadow other situations such as Côte d’Ivoire and Somalia that were showing signs of deterioration at this time, and Ms. Amos urged continued support for those people there as well as other crises around the world.

Mr. Swing said they had been impressed by the generosity and immediacy of support they had received to the appeal they had made about a week ago. Thanks to that generosity they had been able to deal with the flow of people across the borders, and de-congestion had occurred. However, one must remain vigilant, because only about 15 per cent of the foreign population thought to be inside Libya had actually left the country. It was not clear why the flow of people leaving had ebbed to a couple thousand a day when it had been over 1,000 per hour just last week. There were many more people who needed help and many of them were very vulnerable, particularly Africans inside Libya who were under great pressure. Air assets that had been made available would be needed and Mr. Swing urged all governments that had been so generous with aircraft and crews to keep them on standby because they would be needed in the future. This was only the beginning of what was likely to be a longer story. It was at present a migrant crisis primarily, with people seeking to go home and needing assistance to do so.

Mr. Guterres praised the generosity of the governments and people of Egypt and Tunisia for keeping their borders open to all of those seeking refuge and protection. He also expressed gratitude for those agencies and governments who had helped with the massive repatriation exercise, which was a remarkable success. Of the 120,000 people who had crossed the border into Tunisia, only 15,000 were left in the camp today. There was however the possibility that they could see large flows of people again so they might need to scale up their efforts on this repatriation mission again in the future. The tens of thousands of people in distress only wanted to go back home. As far as the suffering of the Libyan people, Mr. Guterres said that about 8,000 of them had crossed the border and they had been accepted into the neighbouring countries. However, most members of the Sub-Saharan African community had not crossed borders in the same numbers and this could mean that they were too afraid to venture out. Mr. Guterres appealed for solidarity with this community in great distress. He underlined that it would be important for the developed world to offer resettlement opportunities for those who could not return home, including Somalis, Eritreans, Palestinians and Iraqis.

Q&A with Press
In response to a question on reports that the Libyan government would allow humanitarian aid into the country, Ms. Amos said that the Secretary-General had spoken with the Libyan foreign minister and it had been agreed that a mission could go into Tripoli. They were now working to hammer out the terms of such access; they would make it clear they wanted unhindered access to make a proper assessment of the situation in the country. They were concerned about the lack of access to western Libya and they were getting reports of injuries and deaths because people had not been able to receive help.

Another journalist asked whether there was any special information about what was going on in the town of Misratah. Ms. Amos said they had received an urgent appeal yesterday from the Benghazi Red Crescent stating that they had been trying to get ambulances into Misratah due to reports of heavy fighting, casualties and injuries and they asked the UN to appeal for access. A doctor in Misratah gave a phone interview in which he described sustained fighting yesterday, medical supplies being destroyed and ambulances being used to fire on people.

Responding to a question on the number and origin of migrants trapped in Libya, Mr. Swing said there were probably 2 million or more migrants in the country, close to 1 million of whom were Egyptian, and more than 200,000 had left the country. These were fairly general figures, but probably not more than 15 per cent of the migrants who were in Libya had come out of so there was probably in excess of 1 million migrants still there. This was largely a migrant crisis, but if large numbers of Libyans were to start leaving it could tilt into a refugee crisis. Mr. Swing cautioned that they should not become complacent as although the numbers of people crossing the borders out of Libya had ebbed a bit, they were sure why exactly.

Mr. Guterres added that they did not know exactly how many Sub-Saharan Africans were in the country, but very few of them had shown up at the border and they were worried by the information they had received from those migrants who had made it to the border. Asked whether there was any new information on why the number of people crossing the border had slowed to a trickle, he said that everyone was trying to figure out what was happening. The one thing they did know was that until a few days ago, the Libyan side of the border with Tunisia was fairly uncontrolled and that the flow had diminished considerably after the security forces regained control of the border area. Ms. Amos said when she was in Tunisia on Saturday and speaking to people in the camps, people told her about numerous checkpoints on the road and a camp on the Libyan side of the border where people were being held or not allowed to leave.

The speakers were asked to assess the burden of the migrant crisis on Tunisia and Egypt. Mr. Swing said that when one had tens of thousands of their own nationals returning to the country as well as having gone through popular uprisings of their own, large numbers of migrants posed an additional burden. These countries had been extraordinarily generous considering the challenges they faced. Ms. Amos said the Tunisian authorities and people had been generous, but they had made it very clear that they were beginning to feel vulnerable and they worried about the long term implications of another influx of people.

Asked when the humanitarian assessment team would travel and whether the special envoy would go in with this assessment team, Ms. Amos said they wanted them to go in as soon as possible and they were working on this.

Journalists also asked whether the speakers supported a no fly zone in Libya, whether they could elaborate on contingency plans for increased arms flows to rebel leaders, and whether there were concerns that armed people would flee across the border if Gaddhafi’s regime fell. Ms. Amos said regarding a no fly zone, this was being debated and discussed at the political level. Their priority was to get into the country to assess the humanitarian needs and they were guided by the principle of operating neutrally and impartially. On contingency planning, there were teams focusing on this right now and the appeal scenario looked at the possibility of 600,000 people fleeing across the border, but because they had so little access to Libya this was only an estimate. The situation was evolving fast which was why they would revise the appeal document in the next two weeks.

Mr. Guterres underlined that until now they had essentially a movement of migrant workers. If they had a massive outflow of Libyans they would have a clear refugee situation and he appealed to countries to keep their doors open and provide assistance.