Human rights organisations have expressed alarm at possible US plans to send a group of migrants from Vietnam, Laos and the Philippines to Libya on a military flight. They have pointed to the appalling conditions migrants face there, which the US State Department described as “harsh and life-threatening” in its 2023 Libya review.
The review quoted the UN support mission in Libya and civil society groups as saying they had “numerous reports of women subjected to forced prostitution in prisons or detention facilities”. A UN fact-finding mission to Libya, also in 2023, made similarly shocking allegations about conditions in Libya’s network of official migrant detention centres.
Such centres are run by the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration, an official entity of the Libyan interior ministry. But, in reality, it is Libya’s complex patchwork of militias that is in control.
