EU EXTERNAL PARTNERS: UNHCR suspends programmes in Egypt ― Rise in hate speech and violence targeting people on the move in Libya ― Shipwreck survivors deported to Tunisian desert

EU EXTERNAL PARTNERS: UNHCR suspends programmes in Egypt ― Rise in hate speech and violence targeting people on the move  in Libya ― Shipwreck survivors deported to Tunisian desert

• The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has suspended most of its programmes in Egypt due to serious budget cuts.
• There has been a surge in hate speech and violence against people on the move in Libya.
• An NGO has reported that more than 600 people who were rescued from the Mediterranean have been deported to the Tunisian desert.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has suspended most of its programmes in Egypt due to serious budget cuts. “The lack of available funds and deep uncertainty over the level of donor contributions this year has forced UNHCR to suspend all medical treatment for refugees in Egypt except emergency life-saving procedures, affecting around 20,000 patients,” the agency wrote in a press release issued on 25 March. It also noted that in 2023 it received “less than 50% of the US$ 135 million it needed to help the more than 939,000 registered refugees and asylum-seekers from Sudan and 60 other countries now living in Egypt” but that the “drastic reduction in humanitarian funding since the start of this year has led to critical shortages, forcing UNHCR to make impossible choices over which life-saving programmes to suspend or maintain”. Although the EU signed a € 7.4 billion agreement with Egypt in March 2024, including € 200 million for “migration management”, it seems unlikely that any of this will be used to plug the funding gap that has been created by the suspension of aid from the US. Commenting on the dire situation faced by many refugees in Egypt, the head of the European University Institute’s Migration Policy Centre, Andrew Geddes, told Euronews: “It’s unlikely that the resources provided by the EU will be directed by the Egyptian authorities to improve this situation”. “The situation [for them] may deteriorate and, for those that do try to move, the journeys may become even more dangerous and deadly,” he added.

There has been a surge in hate speech and violence against people on the move in Libya. According to a press release issued by the NGO Refugees in Libya on 20 March: “Between March 12^th and 16^th, raids, mass arbitrary arrests, assaults, murders and collective expulsions of Black people have been occurring in Western Libya”. “The people targeted by this violence are mostly African migrants and refugees but also Black Libyans and Tunisians,” it continued. In a statement issued on 19 March, the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) reported that remarks attributed to Libyan Minister of Local Governance Badr al-Din al-Toumi on 9 March had been “widely misinterpreted” and that a subsequent meeting between al-Toumi and the head of the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) mission in Libya, Nicoletta Giordano, had “further fuelled unfounded allegations of state-sanctioned “resettlement” plans”. The  OMCT also stated that a video released by Libyan Grand Mufti Sadiq Al-Ghariani on 12 March had falsely conflated humanitarian integration with “resettlement” and suggested foreign-led demographic manipulation, and had “ignited a virulent social media campaign”. “Misinformation, xenophobic rhetoric and institutional neglect have created a perilous environment for migrants,” the organisation wrote, adding: “The tragic killing of Sudanese refugee on March 13^th 2025, and a surge in arbitrary arrest which included women and children since March 11^th, highlight the lethal consequences”. On 13 March, the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) issued a statement in which it expressed its deep concern about a “misinformation campaign that is fuelling tensions in Libya and inciting hate speech against refugees and migrants” and urged “all actors to refrain from spreading unverified information and to ensure that public discourse is fact-based and respectful of human rights”.

An NGO has reported that more than 600 people who were rescued from the Mediterranean have been deported to the Tunisian desert. According to a statement by Mediterranea: “The people were abandoned along the western border of Tunisia in accessible and isolated areas in the Haidra and Djebel Ghorra areas, without any means of support, a few kilometres from the Algerian border”. The organisation explained that the people had been rescued from the sea on 16-17 March, taken to Sfax and then transported to the desert. “The operation, conducted by the Tunisian National Guard and by military personnel from the Ministry of the Interior in Tunis, mobilised 11 buses, onto which the refugees and survivors were loaded after they had been searched and their phones, water and other basic necessities had been confiscated,” it wrote. Mediterranea learned about the deportation when its founder, Luca Casarini, and chaplain, Don Mattia Ferrari, received a call from one of the people involved who “managed to send the GPS position of the place where they were abandoned”. Another victim, a 26-year old Gambian national called Lamine, appeared to confirm the caller’s account several days later when he told the InfoMigrants news agency that an estimated 200 people had been taken to the desert close to the Chambi National Park, approximately 30 kilometres from the Tunisia-Algeria border. “After picking us up at sea on the night of Sunday, March 16 to Monday, March 17, the Tunisian coast guard sent us into the desert,” he said. Tunisian authorities told InfoMigrants that they had “no data” on the incident while the IOM said that it had “no information or precise data on this subject”.

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