Norway to take nearly 500 evacuated from Libya, says Rwandan minister

Norway has agreed to take in nearly 500 people evacuated to Rwanda from Libyan detention centres, Rwanda's foreign minister said on Wednesday, a sign some European nations are willing to welcome migrants despite rising populist sentiment. Rwanda, from where more than 2 million people were displaced amid genocide in 1994, signed a deal with the United Nations in September that is meant to help resettle people detained in Libya while trying to reach Europe.

The migrants evacuated to Rwanda have been given asylum-seeker status there while the U.N refugee agency determines whether they are refugees. “Norway accepted to receive close to 500 people and Sweden took in seven last month. Others are still waiting,” Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta told a news conference in the capital Kigali.

The Norwegian foreign ministry referred queries to the justice ministry, which was not immediately able to comment. European authorities have been trying to close the route across the Mediterranean that has seen thousands of people die at sea while trying to reach Europe in recent years.

Last year, before the deal was signed, the United Nations estimated that around 4,700 people seeking refuge were estimated to be in Libyan detention centres, some of them run by militias and under siege amid civil war. People smugglers have exploited the turmoil in Libya since 2011 to send hundreds of thousands of migrants on dangerous journeys across the central Mediterranean, though the number of crossings dropped sharply from 2017 amid an EU-backed push to block departures.

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