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UNITED NATIONS, February 20 (IPS) – A brand new UN report warns of the “brutal and normalized actuality” for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Libya as they face exploitation and human rights violations.
On February 18, the Workplace of the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the United Nations Help Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) launched a joint report documenting a pointy rise in human rights violations within the nation. The businesses warned that coordinated motion by Libyan communities, nationwide authorities, and the worldwide group is urgently wanted to finish impunity and guarantee significant safety.
Protecting the interval from January 2024 to December 2025, the report attracts on interviews with almost 100 migrants from 16 international locations throughout Africa, the Center East, and South Asia. It outlines what the businesses name an “exploitative mannequin preying” on weak populations, the place abuses have turn into “enterprise as regular”.
In accordance with the findings, migrants and refugees face abduction, arbitrary detention, human trafficking, compelled labor, enforced disappearances, and extreme types of abuse, together with sexual and gender-based violence and torture. Circumstances are particularly dire close to Libya’s borders, the place traffickers, smugglers, armed teams, and even state actors topic people to systematic violence and exploitation.
“After their disembarkation in Libya, they’re routinely held in detention centres which can be breeding grounds for human rights violations and abuses,” mentioned Suki Nagra, the UN Human Rights Consultant to Libya. “We’re seeing waves of racist and xenophobic hate speech and assaults towards migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees, in addition to interceptions at sea the place persons are introduced again to Libya — which we don’t take into account a protected place for disembarkation and return.”
The report notes that migrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees are sometimes caught within the crossfires of violent clashes between smugglers, traffickers, and armed teams, with many deserted within the desert to fend for themselves. These intercepted at Libya’s borders are continuously transferred to formal and casual detention facilities earlier than being forcibly expelled with out due course of, violating the protections towards collective expulsions and the precise to hunt asylum.
In accordance with figures from the Worldwide Group for Migration (IOM), between June 2023 and December 2025, roughly 13,783 migrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees have been intercepted on the Libya-Tunisia border by Libyan authorities. Many people face heightened dangers of refoulement and are left with out entry to water, meals, or medical care, additional compounding the cruel situations confronted at border crossings. Even after coming into Libya, migrants face restrictions on motion between cities, the place checkpoints usually turn into websites of extortion and intimidation.
Between July 2024 and June 2025, migrants and asylum-seekers in Libya confronted repeated waves of compelled expulsions and abandonment within the Sahara Desert. At the least 463 people have been deported to Niger in July 2024, adopted by greater than 1,400 further deportations between January and June 2025. Nearly all of these expelled have been Nigerian nationals, together with ladies and kids, a lot of whom have been unwell.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported discovering 16 folks within the Sahara—together with a mom and her daughter who had died of thirst—whereas 9 others have been reported lacking within the desert. Survivors additionally reported situations of arbitrary arrests throughout Tripoli, Misrata and Sabha, the place many skilled extortion, torture, and confiscation of belongings earlier than being transported in overcrowded vans to be left behind within the Sahara with out meals or water.
2025 noticed a pointy enhance in violence and expulsions. In February, clashes between brigades affiliated with the Libyan Nationwide Military (LNA) led to the destruction of migrant shelters and the arrest of a whole lot, a lot of whom have been detained or forcibly deported to Niger. In June, Libyan authorities introduced the “rescue” of 1,300 Sudanese migrants stranded close to the tri-border area, although studies revealed that some had been beforehand forcibly expelled. They have been finally returned to al-Kufra, Libya, after spending a number of days in harsh desert situations with restricted entry to meals and water.
Migrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees which can be detained face heightened dangers. Studies of the detention facilities describe extreme overcrowding, enforced disappearances, malnutrition, lack of medical care, extortion, and deaths linked to untreated diseases. Ladies, kids, pregnant people, and other people with continual well being situations are disproportionately affected, usually enduring extreme psychological trauma alongside bodily abuse. Moreover, detainees are sometimes subjected to compelled labour underneath coercive and degrading situations, together with rubbish assortment, mechanical work, agricultural labour, and even serving as cell guards. Many are additionally recruited to self-discipline different detainees, whereas others are forcibly recruited to protect traffickers’ compounds, detention facilities, and farms.
In Could 2024, roughly 1,500 migrants from a number of Sub-Saharan African international locations have been transferred to Tamanhint following LNA raids, with dozens reportedly dying alongside the best way resulting from malnutrition, dehydration, and sickness. Many had already endured sexual violence and compelled labour earlier than being moved.
OHCHR and UNSMIL interviewed 50 males from international locations together with Bangladesh, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, and the occupied Palestinian territory, by which 45 reported being tortured or overwhelmed as a way of extortion whereas detained. Their households have been compelled to pay ransom quantities starting from 500 to 10,000 USD to safe their launch.
“I used to be held in al-Kufra. The scenario there’s so pathetic,” mentioned George, a Kenyan nationwide whose household was compelled to pay USD 10,000 for his launch. “They hire homes — that’s the enterprise there. It’s trafficking. In case you attempt to escape, others will seize you once more for ransom. I’m pleading for assist as a result of al-Kufra is unreasonable. They’re manhandling folks and killing folks.”
In accordance with George, captors repeatedly referred to as households from totally different cellphone numbers to demand fee. Those that resisted confronted brutal penalties.
“There was a boy who rebelled — he was overwhelmed and killed. We have been instructed we’d be overwhelmed till our folks paid the ransom. In the event that they didn’t, they’d kill us, abandon us, or throw us into the desert,” he added.
By early 2025, UNSMIL and OHCHR obtained studies of a pointy enhance in charges of human trafficking and sexual and gender-based violence, notably within the migrants’ department of al-Daman juvenile jail, the place migrant kids are held. 5 women, aged between 14 and 17, have been raped a number of instances in 2024 and 2025, in al-Kufra trafficking hubs and in Tripoli. 4 further women from Sudan, aged 12 to 17, additionally reported tried rapes in Tripoli and Bir al-Ghanam.
Between June 2024 and November 2025, ten ladies detained in trafficking hubs reported being sexually abused, trafficked, and witnessing different ladies and women being raped.
“I want I died. It was a journey of hell,” mentioned one Eritrean lady who was detained at a trafficking hub in Tobruk, in japanese Libya, for over six weeks. “Totally different males raped me many instances. Ladies as younger as 14 have been raped every day.”
A unique Eritrean lady, who had been beforehand subjected to genital mutilation, instructed OHCHR that she and her good friend have been forcibly minimize open by traffickers and subsequently raped, along with her good friend later dying from bleeding.
One other survivor, who was detained in a hangar, mentioned that armed males would take ladies at night time and topic them to bodily and sexual violence, oftentimes in entrance of others. “I used to be raped twice in that hangar earlier than my daughters and different migrants. A Sudanese man tried to assist me and cease them, however they beat him severely. My daughter was traumatised and remains to be asking me about that night time,” she mentioned.
The joint report urges Libyan authorities to right away launch all people who’re arbitrarily detained, cease violent and degrading interception practices, and put an finish to compelled labour and human trafficking. It additionally requires efficient and clear mechanisms to make sure accountability for human rights violations and abuses.
Moreover, the report calls on the worldwide group, together with governments and establishments, to fastidiously assessment any funding, coaching, gear, or cooperation involving Libyan entities accused of human rights violations, to make sure that all help is strictly conditioned to adjust to worldwide human rights requirements.
“We advocate authorized and coverage modifications to finish the entrenched, exploitative enterprise mannequin driving these violations and abuses,” Nagra mentioned. “A key space is accountability — holding safety actors, traffickers, and complicit State-affiliated actors accountable. Accountability gives justice to victims and serves as a deterrent to additional violations and abuses.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
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