Several countries urge closure of Libya’s migrant detention centres

During a UN Human Rights Council session held on November 11^th, several countries urged Libya to close its migrant detention centres, citing widespread abuses, according to the Libya Review.

Representatives of Spain, Norway, Sierra Leone, the United Kingdom, and others expressed grave alarm over the inhuman conditions that migrants endure within the facilities.

They described the centres as unlawful and degrading while calling on Libyan authorities to immediately shut them down. They also emphasised the urgent need for Libya to concentrate efforts towards the protection of migrant rights by bringing those responsible for abuses to justice.

In June, UN human rights chief Volker Türk expressed horror at official and unofficial detention centres in Libya operated by the Stabilisation Support Apparatus (SSA) force, which is increasingly relied upon by the UN-backed and Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU) to uphold security.

Türk lamented that “our worst held fears are being confirmed: dozens of bodies have been discovered at these sites, along with the discovery of suspected instruments of torture and abuse, and potential evidence of extrajudicial killings.”

Libya is one of the main migration arteries from sub-Saharan Africa into southern European countries on the Mediterranean Sea. For example, 13,059 migrant arrivals from the North African country to the Greek island of Crete have been documented so far in 2025, representing a 318 percent surge in the space of a year.

This prompted Athens to boost cooperation with the Libyan coast guard, which intercepts migrants making the voyage and subsequently places them in Libyan detention centres.

The coast guard is already party to an EU-backed migration control pact with Italy that has been criticised by Human Rights Watch as a “framework of violence” which grants Italian government funding and training to a coast guard mired in allegations of abuse against migrants and direct attacks against charity vessels.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) reported that approximately 867,055 migrants are currently in Libya, with 33% of them being Sudanese asylum seekers fleeing their country’s brutal civil war.

In early November, a 22-year-old Kurdish man died of starvation and illness in a Tripoli detention centre. The migrant, Hogr Aso, travelled from Iraqi Kurdistan to Libya in an attempt to migrate to Europe. Despite holding a valid visa, the Libyan coast guard apprehended him and placed him in a detention centre, his place of death.

Several international human rights organisations wrote a separate letter to Libyan officials, where they accused armed groups of operating detention centres with total impunity by obstructing court proceedings.

The scope of Libya’s migrant abuse crisis stretches far beyond state misconduct. Migrant trafficking is a flourishing industry in Libya. A November CNN report uncovered non-state militias and gangs, largely located in Libya’s south-eastern Kufra province, intercepting migrants and holding them as hostages, often torturing and sexually abusing them in the interim.

Libya’s political fragmentation into two rival governments after late dictator Muammar Gaddafi was deposed in 2011 has facilitated the development of what Chatham House labelled “an economy dominated by violence.”

Armed groups capitalise on the desperation of asylum seekers fleeing war and persecution as opportunities for profit by either demanding payment to smuggle them into Europe, or by holding them in unofficial detention centres for ransom.

The absence of a strong unified government that can effectively enforce a deterrent has transformed Libya into a hub of migrant exploitation and transit. The ongoing governance crisis led to the rapid expansion of smuggling networks. The number of migrants arriving on Italian shores from Libya increased from 28,500 in 2011 to almost 163,000 in 2016, which was the peak of the crisis.

Since the mid-2010s, the Mediterranean migration crisis has somewhat eased, with the Mixed Migration Centre reporting 49,799 arrivals into Italy from Libya so far in 2025. Nevertheless, migrants remain trapped in “a vicious circle” where they are caught between human rights abuses and often fatal sea crossings.

Libya Review, Maghrebi.org, OHCHR, UN News, Human Rights Watch, CNN, Mixed Migration Centre, Chatham House