The U.N.’s chief human rights official accuses Libya’s political leaders of crushing political dissent to cling to power, leaving the country divided and its people mired in crisis, poverty, and misery.
In a report submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council Tuesday, Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, presented a stinging rebuke of the methods employed by Libya’s governing elite to eviscerate its political opponents and remain in charge.
"A stalled political process, hijacked by actors whose interests align in preserving the status quo, is decimating the hope of Libyans for a more stable, open and thriving society. Hopes they have had to carry for far too long, with little in return,” he said.
The high commissioner’s report covers the human rights situation in Libya in the 12 months since April 2023. The report outlines “some disturbing developments,” among them an escalation in arbitrary arrests and detentions, enforced disappearances and detention-related violations.
“Targeting of political opponents and dissenting voices across the country has accelerated,” he said.
While the figure of those arrested is likely to be higher, he noted that his office has verified at least 60 cases of arbitrary detention of people who were “peacefully exercising their right to express political views.”
“In some cases, detention was followed by extrajudicial killing,” he said.
“All of this is corrosive to the prospects for healing Libya’s fractured social and political environment, especially as grievances around detentions were at the heart of the 2011 uprising,” he said.
He warned that lack of accountability for the violations and abuses committed 13 years ago “remains a serious obstacle to reconciliation today and serves as a driver of conflict.”
Libyan society is still divided 13 years after the country’s former dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, was overthrown. The country is ruled by two rival administrations: the internationally recognized Tripoli-based Government of National Unity and the Government of National Stability, which holds power in the east.
Libya has not had presidential or parliamentary elections since 2014.
At the council, the high commissioner denounced the widespread violations and abuses “perpetrated at scale with impunity” against migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers by both “state and non-state actors, often working in collusion.”
His report documents a litany of horrors to which these vulnerable, desperate people are subjected, including “trafficking, torture, forced labor, extortion, starvation in intolerable conditions of detention,” as well as mass expulsions and the sale of human beings, including children.
“And in March this year a mass grave was discovered in southwestern Libya, containing at least 65 bodies presumed to be migrants,” Türk said.
Following the discovery of the mass grave in March, the International Organization for Migration said, “The circumstances of their death and nationalities remain unknown, but it is believed that they died in the process of being smuggled through the desert.”
The high commissioner said, “As if this were not horrific enough, we are following up on reports of another mass grave recently discovered in the desert area at the Libyan-Tunisian border.”
Calling for investigations into these crimes, Türk said that “The responsibility for investigating these crimes falls squarely with the Libyan authorities. Reparations must be made, justice served and nothing like this must ever happen again.”
Halima Ibrahim Abdel Rahman, Libya’s minister of justice, did not respond to the high commissioner’s mass graves accusations, nor about his allegations regarding the abhorrent treatment of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers.
The minister said that some of the comments “are not in line with reality,” noting that “Libya gives special importance to the rights of refugees, although many of the refugees present in the territory of our country are there clandestinely.”
She also took umbrage at the high commissioner’s charges that human rights violations and abuses against political dissidents are committed with impunity.
“What we see in the report does not fully reflect the efforts taken by the judiciary because we have prosecuted a high number of individuals accused of violating human rights while providing all legal guarantees” to people in “all places of detention, which are under the control of the Ministry of Justice,” she said.
Human rights chief Türk urged Libya to restore the rule of law, including accountability for human rights violations, and to protect the peoples’ right to freedom of assembly and association.
“The stifling of civil society organizations, political activists, journalists and many others is fostering a climate of fear,” he said.
“It is also undermining the very foundations necessary for Libya’s democratic transition, emboldening the spoilers, and enabling security actors to perpetrate human rights violations with impunity,” he said.
