This is according to a new report released earlier this week by the United Nations (UN) human rights office. Covering the period from January 2024 to December 2025, the report describes an “exploitative model” that preys on people in extreme vulnerability and has become a “brutal and normalised reality” in the country.
Drawing on interviews with nearly 100 migrants from 16 countries across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, the report outlines harrowing accounts of abduction, arbitrary detention and extreme abuse. One Eritrean woman detained for six weeks in a trafficking house in Tobruk described repeated rape and the abuse of girls as young as 14. She was released only after relatives paid a ransom.
Another Eritrean woman told investigators how traffickers mutilated her and a friend. Her companion later died from her injuries. Others described being held in warehouses where armed men carried out rapes, torture and beatings in full view of other detainees.
The report says criminal networks, often linked to Libyan authorities, round up migrants and transfer them to detention centres without due process. Many are subjected to slavery, forced labour, forced prostitution, extortion and the confiscation of their belongings and identity documents.
Interceptions at sea by Libyan forces are frequently violent, involving excessive force and dangerous manoeuvres, after which migrants are forced back into Libya and into renewed cycles of abuse.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said the suffering documented in the report reflects a “never‑ending nightmare” fuelled by traffickers and those in power who profit from exploitation. Hanna Tetteh, the UN Secretary‑General’s Special Representative for Libya, said detention facilities have become breeding grounds for grave violations.
The report calls for strengthened search and rescue operations at sea and urges the European Union and other international partners to suspend returns to Libya until concrete human rights safeguards are in place.
“The suffering of migrants and refugees in Libya must end,” Türk said, adding that protecting their rights is an obligation under international law.
–UN/ChannelAfrica–
