UN Report: Human Rights Abuses Against Migrants in Libya Escalating – 2026

United Nations, February 20, 2026 – A new report released by the United Nations warns of a “brutal and normalized reality” for migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in Libya, detailing a surge in exploitation and human rights violations. The joint report, published on February 18 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), calls for urgent coordinated action from Libyan authorities, communities, and the international community to end impunity and ensure meaningful protection for vulnerable populations.

The report, which covers the period from January 2024 to December 2025, is based on interviews with nearly 100 migrants originating from 16 countries across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. It identifies an “exploitative model” that preys on these individuals, where abuse has become commonplace. According to the findings, migrants and refugees face a harrowing range of abuses including abduction, arbitrary detention, human trafficking, forced labor, enforced disappearances, and severe physical and sexual violence, including torture.

Conditions are particularly dire near Libya’s borders, where individuals are subjected to systematic violence and exploitation by traffickers, smugglers, armed groups, and, in some instances, state actors. “After their disembarkation in Libya, they are routinely held in detention centres that are breeding grounds for human rights violations and abuses,” stated Suki Nagra, the UN Human Rights Representative to Libya. Nagra also highlighted a disturbing trend of “waves of racist and xenophobic hate speech and attacks” against migrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees, alongside the practice of interception at sea, which results in individuals being returned to Libya – a country the UN does not consider a safe place for disembarkation.

The report details how migrants often find themselves caught in the crossfire of clashes between smugglers, traffickers, and armed groups, frequently being abandoned in the desert without assistance. Those intercepted at Libya’s borders are often transferred to both formal and informal detention centers before being forcibly expelled without due process, violating international protections against collective expulsion and the right to seek asylum. Between June 2023 and December 2025, Libyan authorities intercepted approximately 13,783 migrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees at the Libya-Tunisia border, many of whom were left without access to basic necessities like water, food, or medical care.

The situation deteriorated sharply in 2025, with a marked increase in violence and expulsions. In February of that year, clashes between brigades affiliated with the Libyan National Army (LNA) led to the destruction of migrant shelters and the arrest of hundreds, many of whom were subsequently detained or forcibly deported to Niger. In June, Libyan authorities announced the “rescue” of 1,300 Sudanese migrants stranded near the tri-border region, but reports later revealed that some had been previously forcibly expelled and then returned to al-Kufra, Libya, after days spent in harsh desert conditions with limited access to essential resources.

Detention centers themselves pose significant risks to migrants. Reports describe severe overcrowding, enforced disappearances, malnutrition, a lack of medical care, extortion, and deaths linked to untreated illnesses. Women, children, pregnant individuals, and those with chronic health conditions are disproportionately affected, often enduring severe psychological trauma alongside physical abuse. Detainees are frequently subjected to forced labor under coercive and degrading conditions, including tasks such as garbage collection, mechanical work, agricultural labor, and even serving as guards within the detention centers. Some are reportedly recruited to discipline other detainees, while others are forcibly recruited to guard traffickers’ compounds, detention centers, and farms.

In May 2024, approximately 1,500 migrants from Sub-Saharan African countries were transferred to Tamanhint following LNA raids, with dozens reportedly dying along the way due to malnutrition, dehydration, and illness. Many had already endured sexual violence and forced labor prior to the transfer. The report also highlights a disturbing increase in financial exploitation, with interviews revealing that 45 out of 50 men interviewed – originating from countries including Bangladesh, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, and the occupied Palestinian territory – reported being tortured or beaten as a means of extortion while detained. Families were forced to pay ransom amounts ranging from 500 to 10,000 USD to secure their release.

“I was held in al-Kufra. The situation there is so pathetic,” recounted George, a Kenyan national whose family was compelled to pay USD 10,000 for his release. “They rent houses – that is the business there. This proves trafficking. If you try to escape, others will capture you again for ransom. I am pleading for help because al-Kufra is unreasonable. They are manhandling people and killing people.” George described how captors repeatedly contacted families from different phone numbers to demand payment, with those who resisted facing brutal consequences.

The report further details a significant rise in human trafficking and sexual and gender-based violence, particularly within the migrants’ branch of al-Daman juvenile prison. Five girls, aged between 14 and 17, were reportedly raped multiple times in 2024 and 2025 in trafficking hubs in al-Kufra and in Tripoli. Four additional girls from Sudan, aged 12 to 17, reported attempted rapes in Tripoli and Bir al-Ghanam. Between June 2024 and November 2025, ten women detained in trafficking hubs reported being sexually abused, trafficked, and witnessing other women and girls being raped.

One Eritrean woman, detained at a trafficking hub in Tobruk for over six weeks, described her ordeal: “I wish I died. It was a journey of hell. Different men raped me many times. Girls as young as 14 were raped daily.” Another Eritrean woman, who had previously undergone female genital mutilation, recounted being forcibly cut open by traffickers and subsequently raped, with a friend later dying from bleeding. A survivor detained in a hangar described armed men taking women at night and subjecting them to physical and sexual violence, often in front of others.

The UN report urges Libyan authorities to immediately release all arbitrarily detained individuals, halt violent and degrading interception practices, and end forced labor and human trafficking. It also calls for the establishment of effective and transparent mechanisms to ensure accountability for human rights violations and abuses. The report calls on the international community to carefully review any funding, training, equipment, or cooperation involving Libyan entities accused of human rights violations, ensuring that all support complies with international human rights standards. “We recommend legal and policy changes to end the entrenched, exploitative business model driving these violations and abuses,” said Nagra. “A key area is accountability – holding security actors, traffickers, and complicit State-affiliated actors responsible. Accountability provides justice to victims and serves as a deterrent to further violations and abuses.”