The 5th AU-EU Summit has ended in Ivory Coast with a call for immediate intervention by the United Nations, the European Union and the African Union to end ongoing slave trade in Libya.
The meeting has revealed that African migrants have been sold from at least 42 sites in some parts of Libya.
The AU has since visited two of these camps in Tripoli and found women and children in dire situation.
The AU-EU summit is a meeting of two continents connected by a long history of interdependence.
It was called to strengthen relations between 54 African countries and their 28 EU counterparts with the skilling of young people from both continents high on the agenda.
However, Libya, a country which once championed Pan Africanism, became a talking point after evidence that it has become a bastion of slave trade. So far, there are close to 700 000 African migrants who are stranded in Libya.
And the Libyan government has confirmed 42 camps where these migrants are being sold to the highest bidders in some parts of Tripoli.
African leaders and their EU counterparts, together with the UN delegation attending the 5th AU EU summit, in Abidjan, have strongly condemned this act as gross violation of human rights and crime against humanity.
Speaking through an interpreter, Chairperson of the AU Alpha Konde says they have evidence of slave trade in Libya.
President of the EU Council Donald Tusk, on the other hand, says all perpetrators must be brought to book insisting that sanctions will be imposed on all those responsible.
And the Chairperson of the AU Commission Mousa Mahamat Faki says sanctions will also extend to freezing accounts of the perpetrators.
And for his part, President Jacob Zuma used the occasion to resuscitate ties between South Africa and the EU with a possible SA-EU summit in the offing sometime in 2018.
The president also used his participation in this meeting to lobby EU countries through the President of the EU Commission to support South Africa’s bid for a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council for the period 2019-2020.
The next AU-EU summit will be held in one of the European countries at a time still confirmed.
