Press briefing notes on Libya

We are deeply concerned by a continuing series of forced expulsions of asylum-seekers and other migrants in Libya, including two large groups of Sudanese over the past month, with another group of 24 Eritreans apparently at imminent risk of similar treatment.

According to information received by our team on the ground, on Monday this week (6 December) a group of 18 Sudanese individuals were expelled without due process after being transferred from the Ganfouda detention centre in Benghazi to the al-Kufra detention centre in southeastern Libya. Both centres are under the control of the Ministry of Interior’s Department for Combatting Illegal Migration (DCIM). They were apparently transported across the Sahara desert to the Libya-Sudan border area and dumped there.

A month earlier, on 5 November, another group of 19 Sudanese were deported to Sudan, also from Ganfouda via the al-Kufra detention centre .

In recent months, other migrants from Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia and Chad – including children and pregnant women -- have also been detained and have either already been expelled or may be at any moment.

Such expulsions of asylum-seekers and other migrants in search of safety and dignity in Libya without the necessary due process and procedural guarantees, contravene the prohibition of collective expulsions and the principle of non-refoulement under international human rights and refugee law.

The Sudanese expelled on Monday, for example, were reportedly arrested, detained and arbitrarily expelled without being afforded an individual assessment of their circumstances and protection needs, such as risk of persecution, torture and ill-treatment or other irreparable harm in their home country. They were not granted access to legal assistance, and were not able to challenge the lawfulness of the expulsion order. In addition, they were not given access to relevant UN organizations, including the UNSMIL Human Rights Service, during their time in detention.

Now of immediate concern is a group of 24 Eritreans who were being held in the same Ganfouda detention centre, and who are believed also to be at risk of imminent deportation. On 3 December, we were informed that, in a pattern mirroring the experience of the expelled Sudanese, they had been transferred to the al-Kufra detention centre in preparation for their deportation.

We published a  report on 25 November, entitled Unsafe and Undignified: The forced expulsion of migrants from Libya, in which we highlighted that asylum-seekers and other migrants in Libya are routinely at risk of arbitrary or collective expulsion from Libya's external land borders in a manner that fails to respect the prohibition of collective expulsion and the principle of non-refoulement. Additionally, the report documents how expulsions from Libya often place migrants in extremely vulnerable situations, including long and perilous return journeys on overcrowded vehicles across remote stretches of the Sahara Desert, one of the world’s harshest deserts, without adequate safety equipment, food, water and medical care.

Those expelled have often already survived a range of other serious human rights violations and abuses in Libya at the hands of both State and non-state actors, including arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, trafficking, sexual violence, torture and ill-treatment. We call on the authorities to protect the rights of all migrants in Libya, regardless of their status, to investigate all claims of violations and abuse, and to bring perpetrators to justice in fair trials.

And we call on Libya to act urgently to meet its obligations under international human rights law, including the principle of non-refoulement and the prohibition of collective expulsions.   We also urge the international community to ensure due diligence in the provision of operational, financial and capacity-building support to the Libyan government in the areas of migration and border management, to ensure these efforts do not undermine human rights.

ENDS

For more information and media requests, please contact:
Rupert Colville + 41 22 917 9767 / rupert.colville@un.org or
Ravina Shamdasani - + 41 22 917 9169 / ravina.shamdasani@un.org or
Liz Throssell + 41 22 917 9296 / elizabeth.throssell@un.org

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