Isreali Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu
Israel has announced it reached a deal with with the UN refugee
agency to cancel a controversial plan to deport African migrants and
replace it with a new one that will see thousands sent to Western
countries.
In the new deal according to a report by AFP, a minimum of 16,250
migrants will be resettled in unspecified Western nations under the
agreement announced in a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's office.
Recall that Netanyahu had in January announced the implementation
of a programme to remove migrants who entered illegally, giving them a
choice between leaving voluntarily or facing indefinite imprisonment
with eventually forced expulsion.
According to interior ministry figures, there are currently some
42,000 African migrants in Israel, half of them children, women or men
with families, who are not facing immediate deportation.
They are mainly Sudanese and Eritrean.
As the migrants could face danger or imprisonment if returned to
their homelands, Israel offered to relocate them to an unnamed African
country, which deportees and aid workers said was Rwanda or Uganda.
The statement on Monday said the new plan meant there was no longer a need to send migrants to unnamed third countries
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