Vietnam thanks international community for helping evacuate citizens from Libya

Ambassador Bui The Giang, Deputy Head of the Permanent Mission of Vietnam to the United Nations, thanked the governments of Egypt, Tunisia and other countries, as well as relevant international organizations, for facilitating efforts to evacuate Vietnamese people from Libya.

On March 10, speaking at an emergency meeting on the humanitarian situation in Libya organized by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Ambassador informed that Vietnam is one of 47 countries with citizens present in Libya at the time of the humanitarian crisis in this country, and is one of the countries that has evacuated all of its citizens from Libya's borders to bring them back home.

Vietnamese workers leave refugee camp. Photo: Nhan Sang (VNA)

The Ambassador also said that in parallel with making maximum efforts to evacuate Vietnamese citizens from Libya, the Vietnamese Government is working with Vietnamese agencies and organizations to soon stabilize life and solve jobs for Vietnamese citizens who have returned home.

Ambassador Bui The Giang also asked the governments of Bahrain, Malta and Tunisia to continue to cooperate and soon grant permission for Vietnamese aircraft to fly over the airspace of these countries to transport Vietnamese citizens from Libya back home in the coming days.

At the meeting, representatives of OCHA, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported on the humanitarian situation in Libya recently, according to which more than 250,000 foreigners have left Libya's borders to neighboring countries, mainly Tunisia and Egypt, before being repatriated.

Currently, drinking water, medicine, equipment and medical staff are in serious shortage; sanitary conditions have become very poor; humanitarian aid has only reached people in one-quarter of Libya's territory... Many countries and international organizations have actively provided support, but the actual needs are still very high.

According to VNA