Assistance to Egyptian returnees from Libya

The operation has been revised as per budget revision 5 (see below)

Libya is undergoing considerable political unrest and violence has escalated throughout 2014 and into 2015. Three years on from the international community’s intervention in Libya, the country finds itself in complete disarray with the state apparatus crumpled.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Egypt, Libya hosts around 1.6 million Egyptians. Due to the escalation of armed conflict inside Libya, violence against Egyptian migrant workers, and especially following the execution of 21 Egyptian citizens in mid-February 2015, thousands of Egyptians have been forced to leave their jobs and belongings and return to Egypt.

In August 2014 nearly 50,000 Egyptians arrived at the Musaid-Salloum border crossing were supported to return to Egypt. The Egyptian Government project that the number of economic migrants returning to Egypt will reach as much as 500,000 people by the end of 2015.

Returnees arrive in Egypt with limited or no means of subsistence and face the challenge of finding employment. Most returnees are low-skilled labourers originating from the economically stressed region of Upper Egypt whose villages of origin have few economic prospects. As such, there is an immediate need to support vulnerable and food-insecure Egyptian returnees in a context of rising food prices and an already overstretched social and economic system.

The EMOP will address WFP Strategic Objective 1: “Save lives and protect livelihoods in emergencies” specifically to reduce food insecurity and stabilize the nutritional status of returnees, refugees and other vulnerable groups.

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Budget revision 5 to EMOP 200835 extends the project in time for three months from July to September 2016 with the same implementation period with no increase in the budget.