African, European ministers discuss ways to protect migrants

Protecting migrants en route from North Africa to Italy was the focus of a meeting of ministers from south and north of the Mediterranean in the Swiss city of Bern on Monday.

The Central Mediterranean Contact Group previously focused mainly on keeping migrants away when it gathered for its first two meetings in Rome in March and in Tunis in July.

In Libya, North Africa's main departure point, some 17,000 migrants are held in inhumane conditions in camps, according to estimates by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), while thousands are kept in dungeons.

They face extortion, slavery and hunger at the hands of criminal groups, according to aid organizations.

UNHCR plans to expand its EU-funded programme of evacuating vulnerable refugees from Libya to neighbouring Niger, a senior UNHCR official told dpa shortly before the Bern meeting.

Up to 500 people are to be brought out of Libya until the end of the year, said Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR's Mediterranean migration envoy.

Switzerland invited officials of the United Nations, the Red Cross and the European Union to the Contact Group meeting, along with ministers and senior officials from Algeria, Austria, Chad, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Libya, Mali, Malta, Niger, Slovenia, and Tunisia.

They are set to discuss how to improve conditions in Libya's detention centres and to build up asylum systems in other African countries.

Since January, 114,000 mostly African migrants have arrived on Italy's shores. Arrival numbers have dropped sharply since July, following deals that Rome struck with the Libyan coastguard and - allegedly - local militias.