The Netherlands: Coranavirus Repatriation €10 million fund launched to bring Dutch Citizens back to the Netherlands

Travelers stuck outside of the Netherlands due to flights being halted or severely limited in the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic have a new option to get help to return home. A ten-million euro fund was launched on Monday to provide assistance to stranded fliers, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Monday.

Essentially, passengers will contribute 300 euros for their own repatriation if returning back from the European Union or 20 countries near the EU. The personal contribution rises to 900 euros for countries further away from the list of EU-adjacent countries.

"We need to do our utmost to get these people home safely," said Stef Blok, the Dutch foreign minister, of the complicated situation. "Because of the huge impact of the coronavirus, this group in particular really has nowhere else to turn."

Read more at: €10 million fund launched to bring people back to Netherlands | NL Times

EU-Africa agree on repatriating migrants, but not on the bill – by Cécile Barbière

African and European countries have adopted a special joint declaration on Libya and said they want to repatriate migrants stranded in Libya to their countries of origin. But the question of who should pay for it has been carefully avoided.

This is perhaps the only concrete action taken at the EU-Africa Summit, which ended on Thursday (30 November) in Abidjan. Some 3,800 African migrants stranded in Libya in inhumane conditions will be repatriated urgently to their country of origin.

These migrants detained in Tripoli recently received a visit from the African Union commissionner for social affairs, Amira El Fadil, who was able to witness firsthand the catastrophic conditions in detention centres.

These thousands of people will be returned by flights made available by the Moroccan and European authorities. “But this is only one detention camp, while the Libyan government has counted 42, and there may be more,” said the President of the Commission of the African Union, Moussa Faki Mahamat.

The number of African migrants stranded in Libya is estimated at between 400,000 and 700,000, according to the Mahamat.

The announcement concluded a summit focused on the plight of migrants stranded in Libya, while the announced agenda was dedicated to youth, investment, good governance, migration and security.

EU-Africa agree on repatriating migrants, but not on the bill – EURACTIV.com

Migrants - the Netherlands: Doubled numbers of migrants leave the Netherlands

 Twice as many migrants chose to leave the Netherlands in the first half of 2016 compared to the same period last year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Its ‘assisted voluntary return and reintegration program’ has helped 2,500 migrants leave the Netherlands in 2016 – quite possibly for sunnier climes – compared with 1,288 in the same period last year. Most of these people came from Afghanistan, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kosovo, Mongolia, Serbia and Ukraine.

Last year the IOM’s international organisation helped 70,000 migrants leave the countries where they had taken refuge, and re-integrate on their return. ‘This was the largest number of voluntary returns registered in the past decades,’ says the organisation on its website.

‘The current migration trends seem to indicate that returns could increase in the years to come – not only in the number of migrants in need of assistance, but also in the complexity of the process.’


Read more: Doubled numbers of migrants leave the Netherlands - DutchNews.nl