File photo of migrants seen in a boat
The United Nations has called on both the UN-backed government and a rival administration in Libya to undertake urgent reforms to protect the rights and dignity of migrants and refugees.
In a new report published on Tuesday by its Human Rights Office and the UN Support Mission in Libya, it also called for a moratorium on the return of migrants boats to the country until human rights are ensured.
It found that migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in Libya are victims of systematic rights violations and abuses, including murder, torture, sexual violence, and human trafficking.
The report adds that they are “rounded up and abducted by networks of traffickers, often linked to the authorities” and criminal organisations.
The document denounces “an exploitative model” that preys on the “heightened vulnerability” of migrants and has become “a brutal and normalised reality”.
Since the fall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has become a transit route across the Mediterranean to Europe for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty
The UN and international NGOs say the situation has fostered human trafficking and abuses against migrants, who have fallen victim in particular to extortion and slavery.
The report, which paints a bleak picture of their conditions in Libya, identified four patterns of violations and abuses.
These include everything from “illegal and dangerous interceptions at sea” to “slavery” and “sexual and gender-based violence”, as well as “torture” and “enforced disappearance”.
People “arbitrarily” detained in official and unofficial detention centres — around 40 sites — must be released immediately, urged the two UN agencies.
According to them, by the end of 2025, nearly 5,000 people were held in “official” centres, but NGOs say they believe the real figure is much higher.
The UN report is based on interviews with almost 100 migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees from 16 countries in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.
