Migrants in Libya victims of ‘violent business model’ of exploitation and abuse, UN reports
Een rapport van de Verenigde Naties dat op 17 februari werd gepubliceerd, stelt dat migranten in Libië worden geconfronteerd met marteling, verkrachting, dwangarbeid en ontvoering binnen een systeem dat menselijk leed als een bron van inkomsten beschouwt. De titel is dan ook ‘Business as Usual’. Op basis van interviews van OHCHR met bijna honderd migranten concludeert het rapport dat de vastgestelde uitbuiting geen toevallig incident is, maar als een bedrijfsmodel functioneert voor de mensensmokkelaars. Toch blijft de Europese Unie, in nauwe samenwerking met Libië, onderschepte migranten naar Libië terugsturen.
The report, titled Business as Usual, draws from interviews conducted between January 2024 and November 2025, both inside and outside Libya. It documents horrific abuse and human rights violations.
Armed groups and traffickers forcibly round up migrants across the country. State-affiliated actors often operate alongside them. Victims are separated from families and transferred at gunpoint. Many are detained without due process.
Inside these facilities, survivors describe torture, sexual violence, forced labour, and repeated resale. One Eritrean woman described her six weeks detention in a trafficking house in Tobruk as “a journey of hell.”
Abuse as a revenue stream
Traffickers demand ransom payments from relatives abroad. Traffickers sell, transfer, or kill anyone who cannot pay.
Al Jazeera reports: A woman identified as Gloria from Nigeria was forced into marriage as a child at the age of 15. “People come there to buy people, to buy human beings. They forced me into prostitution. I stayed there for a long time before I ran away,” she said.
The report emphasized the importance of life-saving search and rescue operations for migrants at sea. But the international community must also halt returns to Libya until adequate human rights safeguards are ensured.
The report concludes that detention facilities and trafficking houses operate within a structured system of exploitation. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said that, “there are no words to describe the never-ending nightmare these people are forced into, only to feed the mounting greed of traffickers and those in power profiting from a system of exploitation.”
The High Commissioner’s office reports: Beyond the scale of abuse, armed groups, traffickers, and state-affiliated actors operate in overlapping roles, blurring the line between state authority and criminal enterprise.
EU continues to fuel abuse
Libya has served as a major transit point since 2011. Migrants flee conflict and poverty and attempt to reach Europe. In recent years, the EU has supported and trained the Libyan Coast Guard despite continuous reports of the agency’s violence.
Those interceptions return migrants to Libya, despite extensive evidence that detention sites function as hubs of trafficking and abuse. The UN Human Rights Office has stated that Libya is not a safe place for disembarkation and return.
The report urges governments to halt returns to Libya and implement human rights protections. It also emphasizes the importance of life-saving search and rescue operations at sea which the EU has been cracking down on.
However, these findings come on the heels of the EU’s announced new chapter of migration policy expanding fast-track border procedures and externalized enforcement.
This is why we are calling on European leaders to end cooperation that enables forced returns to Libya.
Add your name to demand that the EU stop supporting interceptions that deliver migrants into trafficking networks and instead create safe, legal pathways that protect lives and prevent exploitation.
Dit artikel verscheen op 17 februari 2026 op de website van de NGO Freedom United die wereldwijd de strijd aanbindt tegen moderne vormen van slavernij en gedwongen arbeid: https://www.freedomunited.org/news/eu-libya-trafficking-profit/
Lees ook:
– ‘Journey of hell’: Migrants in Libya endure torture, rape, forced labour. A new UN report says migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in Libya are being forcibly rounded up and abused (Al Jazeera, 17 februari 2026) https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/17/journey-of-hell-migrants-in-libya-endure-torture-rape-forced-labour
– Business as Usual: Human Rights Violations and Abuses against Migrants, Asylum-Seekers, and Refugees in Libya (report jointly published by UNSMIL and OHCHR, 17 February 2026) https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/reports/business-usual-human-rights-violations-and-abuses-against-migrants-asylum-seekers
– Independent Mid-Term Joint Evaluation Of UNODC/OHCHR PROMIS Project “Strengthening The Capacities of West African States to Develop a Human Rights-Based Response to Smuggling of Migrants and to Effectively Respond to Human Rights Violations Related to Irregular Migration” (31 maart 2025) https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/reports/independent-mid-term-joint-evaluation-unodcohchr-promis-project-strengthening
– Advancing a rights-based approach to climate change resilience and migration in the Sahel https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/reports/advancing-rights-based-approach-climate-change-resilience-and-migration-sahel
– Nowhere but back: Assisted return, reintegration and the human rights protection of migrants in Libya https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/reports/nowhere-back-assisted-return-reintegration-and-human-rights-protection-migrants
– Two babies among 53 people dead or missing after boat capsizes off Libya. The incident brings the number of people reported dead or missing on the central Mediterranean route this year to at least 484 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/9/at-least-53-people-dead-or-missing-after-boat-capsizes-off-libya
– Libië, tien jaar later: nog altijd leven in totale chaos en wetteloosheid https://cimic-npo.org/2021/02/27/item20-007/
– Uit de schaduw: Ali en de verschrikkingen van de mensensmokkel https://cimic-npo.org/2025/10/24/66-015/
– Ali. De opera van het Europese ‘grensspektakel’ https://cimic-npo.org/2025/11/24/67-006/
– ‘Omvolkingstheorie’ van president leidt tot ongezien racisme in Tunesië https://cimic-npo.org/2023/03/31/41-005/
#tags: migratie, Libië, mensensmokkel, Volker Türk, OHCHR, UNSMIL, mensenrechtenschendingen, Freedom United, dwangarbeid, slavernij, Libische kustwacht, Tripoli, asielzoekers, straffeloosheid, bescherming, Verenigde Naties, Hoge Commissaris voor de Mensenrechten, detentiecentra, milities, Afrika, Sahara, Sahel, foltering, verkrachting, Europese Unie, buitengrenzen, vluchtelingen, reddingsoperaties op zee,
