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 Assist 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 neighborhood is urgently wanted to finish impunity and guarantee significant safety.
Masking the interval from January 2024 to December 2025, the report attracts on interviews with almost 100 migrants from 16 nations throughout Africa, the Center East, and South Asia. It outlines what the businesses name an “exploitative mannequin preying” on susceptible populations, the place abuses have turn out to be “enterprise as standard”.
In line with the findings, migrants and refugees face abduction, arbitrary detention, human trafficking, pressured labor, enforced disappearances, and extreme types of abuse, together with sexual and gender-based violence and torture. Situations 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,” stated Suki Nagra, the UN Human Rights Consultant to Libya. “We’re seeing waves of racist and xenophobic hate speech and assaults in opposition to migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees, in addition to interceptions at sea the place persons are introduced again to Libya — which we don’t contemplate a secure 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 in opposition to collective expulsions and the precise to hunt asylum.
In line 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 circumstances confronted at border crossings. Even after getting into Libya, migrants face restrictions on motion between cities, the place checkpoints usually turn out to be websites of extortion and intimidation.
Between July 2024 and June 2025, migrants and asylum-seekers in Libya confronted repeated waves of pressured 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. The vast majority of these expelled have been Nigerian nationals, together with ladies and kids, a lot of whom have been ill.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported discovering 16 individuals 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 cases of arbitrary arrests throughout Tripoli, Misrata and Sabha, the place many skilled extortion, torture, and confiscation of belongings earlier than being transported in overcrowded vehicles 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 bunch, 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 experiences revealed that some had been beforehand forcibly expelled. They have been ultimately returned to al-Kufra, Libya, after spending a number of days in harsh desert circumstances 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. Girls, kids, pregnant people, and folks with persistent well being circumstances are disproportionately affected, usually enduring extreme psychological trauma alongside bodily abuse. Moreover, detainees are sometimes subjected to pressured labour below coercive and degrading circumstances, 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 nations have been transferred to Tamanhint following LNA raids, with dozens reportedly dying alongside the way in which attributable to malnutrition, dehydration, and sickness. Many had already endured sexual violence and compelled labour earlier than being moved.
OHCHR and UNSMIL interviewed 50 males from nations 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 crushed as a way of extortion whereas detained. Their households have been pressured 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,” stated George, a Kenyan nationwide whose household was pressured to pay USD 10,000 for his launch. “They lease homes — that’s the enterprise there. It’s trafficking. If you happen to 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 individuals and killing individuals.”
In line with George, captors repeatedly known as households from completely different telephone numbers to demand cost. Those that resisted confronted brutal penalties.
“There was a boy who rebelled — he was crushed and killed. We have been informed we might be crushed till our individuals paid the ransom. In the event that they didn’t, they might kill us, abandon us, or throw us into the desert,” he added.
By early 2025, UNSMIL and OHCHR acquired experiences 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 ladies, aged between 14 and 17, have been raped a number of occasions in 2024 and 2025, in al-Kufra trafficking hubs and in Tripoli. 4 further ladies 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 ladies being raped.
“I want I died. It was a journey of hell,” stated one Eritrean girl who was detained at a trafficking hub in Tobruk, in japanese Libya, for over six weeks. “Completely different males raped me many occasions. Women as younger as 14 have been raped each day.”
A special Eritrean girl, who had been beforehand subjected to genital mutilation, informed OHCHR that she and her good friend have been forcibly minimize open by traffickers and subsequently raped, together with her good friend later dying from bleeding.
One other survivor, who was detained in a hangar, stated that armed males would take ladies at evening 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 evening,” she stated.
The joint report urges Libyan authorities to instantly launch all people who’re arbitrarily detained, cease violent and degrading interception practices, and put an finish to pressured 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 neighborhood, together with governments and establishments, to rigorously overview any funding, coaching, tools, 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 stated. “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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