ROME, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Italy is allocating six million euros (7.2 million U.S. dollars) to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to improve human rights in migrant detention camps in Libya, local media reported Friday.
The announcement comes two days after the medical aid NGO, Doctors without Borders (MSF), issued an open letter to European leaders in which it denounced systematic abuses in the Libya migrant camps. These include torture for the purpose of extortion, rape, starvation, or forced labor.
Italy's 6-million-euro tender to NGOs interested in working in the Libya camps will launch "very shortly, by the end of this month," deputy foreign minister Mario Giro told ANSA in an interview on Friday.
"Libyan authorities will be totally involved," he said.
Giro put out a call to interested NGOs, and several humanitarian groups and charities attended a meeting with him in Rome on Thursday, La Stampa newspaper reported.
They include MSF, Save the Children, Swiss-based Terre des Hommes children's rights federation, and others.
"We don't want to abandon these people in hell," Giro told La Stampa.
"This is why Italy's international cooperation agency is taking action...without waiting for the UN Refugee Agency or the International Organization for Migration (IOM)," Giro explained.
The deputy foreign minister said Italy would allocate an additional 3 million euros for an accord with Libyan mayors in areas where there are migrant detention camps.
As well, on Sept. 10, an official from the Italian Cooperation and Development Agency will move to Tripoli, where Italy opened an embassy in January this year.
Earlier this year, Italy struck a deal with the Tripoli-based Libyan government to stop people traffickers' boats loaded with migrants and asylum seekers from leaving for Italy.
The accord calls for providing Libyans with alternatives to the lucrative people trafficking business, and has been credited with a 19.71-percent drop in arrivals, according to interior ministry data.
A total of 124,555 asylum seekers reached Italy between Jan. 1 and Sept. 8, 2016, compared to just over 100,000 arrivals in the same period this year, the interior ministry said Friday in a statement.
A total of 181,436 migrants and asylum seekers reached Italy in 2016, official figures show.
