Rwanda has received 177 asylum seekers evacuated from Libya, the country’s Ministry in Charge of Emergency Management (MINEMA) confirmed on Wednesday, August 5.
The group landed under the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM), a programme MINEMA runs in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It is the 24th group of asylum seekers evacuated from Libya to arrive in Rwanda since the scheme began.
MINEMA said the new arrivals include 68 Sudanese nationals, 66 Eritreans, 26 South Sudanese, 15 Ethiopians and two Somalis. The ministry announced the figures in a statement posted on its official channel on Wednesday evening.
They will be housed at the Gashora Transit Centre in Bugesera District, the same facility that has accommodated earlier convoys of asylum seekers evacuated from Libya since 2019.
MINEMA reaffirmed, in its Wednesday statement, that Rwanda remains committed to protecting people forced to flee conflict and persecution. The ministry framed the reception as part of a longstanding humanitarian arrangement rather than a one-off gesture.
The Emergency Transit Mechanism dates back to September 2019, when the African Union, the Government of Rwanda and UNHCR signed a Memorandum of Understanding to evacuate vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers out of Libya. The deal followed a public offer by Rwandan authorities to host people trapped in Libya’s migration corridor, where detention, exploitation and violence have been widely documented by humanitarian agencies.
Since that agreement took effect, Rwanda has received more than 3,000 asylum seekers evacuated from Libya. Of that number, UNHCR figures cited by MINEMA show 2,623 have already been resettled to third countries, among them Canada, France, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Norway, the United States, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark.
Wednesday’s group arrived less than two months after the last recorded transfer. On June 17, Rwanda received 173 asylum seekers evacuated from Libya, made up mostly of Sudanese and Eritrean nationals alongside smaller numbers from South Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia. That convoy was also processed through Gashora before onward case review by UNHCR.
The Gashora centre, established under the same tripartite arrangement between the African Union, Rwanda and UNHCR, can hold up to 700 people at any one time. Once inside, asylum seekers evacuated from Libya undergo registration and refugee status determination handled by UNHCR staff, a process meant to establish whether they qualify for resettlement, voluntary return or continued protection in Rwanda.
Humanitarian officials have repeatedly flagged Libya as one of the most dangerous transit points for people fleeing conflict in the Horn of Africa and Sudan. Many of those evacuated have passed through informal detention facilities before reaching the coast, with UNHCR staff conducting screening inside Libya to identify people most in need of urgent removal.
Sudan’s ongoing conflict has pushed thousands of civilians toward Libya and other transit routes over the past two years, a trend reflected in Wednesday’s arrivals, where Sudanese nationals made up the single largest group.
Rwanda’s role in the Emergency Transit Mechanism has made it one of the few African states directly involved in relocating people out of Libya rather than simply receiving refugees from neighbouring conflicts. The Gashora facility operates alongside a similar UNHCR-backed transit arrangement in Niger, which has evacuated thousands more people from Libya since 2017.
For the 177 asylum seekers evacuated from Libya who arrived this week, the next stage will involve interviews, documentation and health checks at Gashora before UNHCR determines individual case outcomes. Officials have not given a timeline for when resettlement decisions for this latest group will begin.
