The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is set to repatriate 33 young people from the Kurdistan Region who were stranded in Libya after attempting to migrate irregularly to Western countries, Erbil’s Interior Ministry announced on Wednesday.

In a statement, the ministry said the repatriation followed reports that a group of citizens from the Kurdistan Region had gone missing in Libya. Prime Minister Masrour Barzani subsequently instructed the Interior Ministry and the Department of Foreign Relations in Erbil to take “urgent and necessary measures” to locate, rescue and return the individuals.

“All procedures regarding these 33 citizens have been completed, and they will be returned to the Kurdistan Region next week,” the ministry said.

The repatriation comes amid continued attempts by young people from the Kurdistan Region to reach Europe through Libya and across the Mediterranean. Unemployment, economic hardship and the search for better employment opportunities are among the factors driving some young people to undertake dangerous irregular migration journeys.

The announcement follows comments made in mid-August by Iraq’s chargé d’affaires in Libya, Ahmed al-Sahhaf, who told Rudaw that 36 migrants from the Kurdistan Region had been located in Libya and were expected to be returned to Iraq.

According to Sahhaf, the migrants were being held at a shelter and a counter-illegal-migration center in Tripoli. The Iraqi Embassy in Libya had coordinated with Libyan authorities to arrange their return and had issued temporary passports to facilitate the process.

Erbil’s Interior Ministry did not provide details about how the 33 migrants reached Libya or when they were located. However, it said some of them had spent as long as eight months in prison and had faced an ongoing risk to their lives.

The ministry urged young people and their families to avoid irregular migration routes, warning that such journeys can put migrants’ lives at risk and expose them to legal violations and serious consequences in other countries.

The ministry also said that, to date, the KRG had rescued 302 irregular migrants from various situations and returned them to the Kurdistan Region.

Meanwhile, Sahhaf said in mid-August that approximately 352 citizens from the Kurdistan Region had been repatriated from Libya since December 2023, highlighting the continuing scale of irregular migration from the region toward Europe.