TRIPOLI(RAHNUMA): The UN on Tuesday called on the Libyan authorities — both the UN-backed government in Tripoli and a rival administration in the east — to undertake urgent reforms to protect the rights and dignity of migrants and refugees.
“In Libya, systematic and widespread human rights violations and abuses against migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees persist with impunity,” said a report by the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
The document denounces “an exploitative model” that preys on migrants’ “heightened vulnerability” and has become “a brutal and normalized reality.”
The UN 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 centers — 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” centers, known as DCIM, but the real figure is much higher, according to NGOs.
Since the death of longtime ruler Muammar Qaddafi in 2011 following a NATO-backed uprising, Libya has been riven by divisions and instability.
It remains divided between a UN-recognized government based in Tripoli, in the west, and an eastern administration backed by Khalifa Haftar.
The situation has fostered human trafficking and abuses against migrants, who have fallen victim in particular to extortion and slavery, according to the UN and international NGOs.
“To dismantle this highly exploitative model, urgent legal and policy reforms are required,” UNSMIL and OHCHR urged.
By mid-2024, the Migration Data Portal managed by the IOM recorded around 900,000 migrants and refugees in Libya.
UNSMIL and OHCHR also urged the European Union and its member states to “establish a moratorium on all interceptions and returns to Libya until adequate human rights safeguards are ensured.”
Located about 300 km from the Italian coast, Libya is one of the main North African departure points for migrants risking their lives to try to reach Europe.
Interceptions by the Libyan coast guard, often involving the use of force, occur along “one of the deadliest migratory routes in the world — the Mediterranean Sea — where 33,348 deaths and missing persons have been recorded from 2014 to 2025, with the actual figure likely to be much higher,” according to the report.
