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<p>Her Majesty’s Government has an extensive programme of work underway with North
African partners to address the criminal activities of people smugglers and human
traffickers in that region. For example, we are working with partners in North and
East Africa to address the maltreatment of Eritrean migrants in the Sinai, and in
March of this year, the Home Secretary also signed an EU ‘Mobility Partnership’ with
Tunisia, which is intended to bolster cooperation with that country, including joint
efforts to tackle illegal immigration and trafficking in human beings. We have also
made clear our intention to join a ‘core group’ of Member States and African partners
leading the new ‘Khartoum Process’, due to be launched at a Ministerial Conference
in Rome on 28 November, which will focus on new, concrete actions to combating people
smuggling and human trafficking in the Horn of Africa. We also support the EU’s proposals
for sustainable protection in North and East Africa under EU Regional Development
and Protection Programmes (RDPPs). We intend to work with our EU partners to deliver
them, as we have already done with the Syria EU Regional Protection and Development
Programme alongside our provision of £700 Million in humanitarian aid.</p><p>In the
Government’s view the only sustainable response to the scale of the situation in the
Mediterranean is to ensure sufficient protection is available in the region and work
with third country partners to combat the facilitators and traffickers. We do recognise
there will be some refugees for whom regional protection does not offer a viable solution,
which is why the UK continues to number among those offering the greatest number of
resettlement places in the EU, and has developed our Vulnerable Persons Relocation
scheme to specifically address the needs of vulnerable migrants fleeing the Syrian
conflict.</p><p> </p>
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