"A better life somewhere else": Europe-bound African migrants wait in Rwanda

Reuters - The United Nations emergency transit center in Gashora, Rwanda is home to 189 people who have fled their homes in Africa in search of a better life in Europe. The men, women, single mothers, unaccompanied children, and families took their dangerous journey from Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia and ended up in Libya where authorities are trying to close the route to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea. Many of them speak about the horrors they suffered in the hands of smugglers and traffickers and later the inhumane conditions they experienced in detention centers in war-torn Libya. In September, the UNHCR signed a deal with Rwanda to resettle them while the agency determines their status and where they will be resettled. A few weeks ago, asylum-seekers like Sudanese Abdullah Rodwan, who left his home in Darfur, arrived via a U.N.-chartered flight in Kigali. He says he is grateful to Rwanda for hosting them but he knows where he wants to end up: Europe, America or Canada. Anywhere but Africa. "We need to go out, we need to go out to Europe because it is our destination, all of us because, now we got a chance to evacuate (for us) to Rwanda, thanks for that. But now all of us are waiting for another state when the next is coming. We are all waiting for resettlement, for a better life in Europe, America or Canada wherever. Just, we just need to go. You know in Africa, I hear some, they give a chance to live in Africa. We know Africa today is good but tomorrow is easily it's gonna be bad, we don't know... that is why we are looking for a better life in another country," Rodwan said. For now, Rwanda, which at one time in 1994 had over 2 million of its citizens displaced after a genocide, is home to these asylum-seekers. The UNHCR said around 3,000 migrants are still thought to be in detention in Libya. Another 120 are expected to arrive next month in the tiny central African nation. Thousands of people, many from African countries, have drowned trying to cross the sea to Europe.