Migrants from Horn of Africa face violence, trauma, bishop tells U.N.

Published: 2007-09-27

ROME (CNS) -- Migrants leaving the Horn of Africa in search of promised economic opportunities abroad often face dangerous voyages, horrific violence and emotional trauma, making them in urgent need of international protection, the bishop of Djibouti told U.N. leaders in Geneva. Bishop Giorgio Bertin, who also serves as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Mogadishu, Somalia, said in a Sept. 26 written address that "sadistic methods" are used by unscrupulous and abusive traffickers "to extract money from migrants" for transport across borders. Migrants can be abandoned along the route or threatened with torture, he wrote. Often they go without food or water for days or suffer abuse and rape by their traffickers as they trek across deserts or are shipped over oceans in extremely dangerous conditions, he told a consultative panel for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Catholic News Service in Rome obtained a copy of the bishop's remarks.

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