Italy welcomes 178 Afghan refugees from Pakistan, Iran

Rome: Two groups of Afghan refugees have arrived in Italy through humanitarian corridors recently: 26 people landed in Rome from Tehran on Tuesday and 152 people from Pakistan arrived last week.

A group of 152 Afghan refugees from Pakistan arrived in Italy through a humanitarian corridor last week.

Among those who welcomed the refugees were archbishop Giuseppe Baturi, Secretary General of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), Libero Ciuffreda, member of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy (Fcei), Filippo Miraglia, responsible for migration at the ARCI association and Marco Impagliazzo, President of the Community of Sant’Egidio.

“All of Italy celebrates your arrival and welcomes you and wishes to give a future, through schooling and work to families who seemed to have lost this chance due to war,” Impagliazzo told the refugees.

The leader of Sant’Egidio also called for the humanitarian corridor model to be adapted across Europe. “Italy should lead the way in Europe for humanitarian corridors, a project that … has become a well-established practice, that should be proposed to the entire European Union as a model of hospitality and integration, for those in need of humanitarian protection,” he said.

The newly arrived refugees were taken in by associations, religious congregations, communities and private citizens across different regions in Italy.

The humanitarian corridors model allows non-state organizations in Italy to bring vulnerable refugees to Italy from other countries. The Italian interior and foreign ministry allow the refugees to enter the country because these organizations have pledged to take care of them — to finance services such as housing and language classes, as well as to provide integration measures.

Italy was the first country with humanitarian corridors, but several other European countries have copied the idea, including France and Belgium.

According to a press release by the Community of Sant’Egidio, thanks to humanitarian corrdiors, “over 5,300 refugees reached Europe, to these figures an additional 1,800 Ukrainian citizens must be added. The Ukrainian citizens were welcomed by the Community of Sant’Egidio in different countries in Europe.”

Another 26 Afghan refugees landed in Rome on Tuesday (November 29) from Tehran. They arrived via a humanitarian corridor organized by Fcei — the Italian federation of protestant churches.

Among the people who arrived from Iran are reportedly two people who are being reunited with family members who arrived in Italy last July, as well as a young woman who used to work for a US American NGO and reportedly faced danger because of this.

Afghans were not the only nationals to land in Italy on a humanitarian corridor flight this week. On Wednesday, 114 asylum seekers from Libya arrived at the airport in Rome.