The Entrenchment of Neo-Slavery in Libya

One year after video showing black migrants and asylum-seekers being auctioned off in Libya shocked the Global North, the trafficking of sub-Saharan African migrants in the country continues unabated. Smugglers shepherding groups through the dangerous trans-Sahara journey extort and abuse migrants before selling those without the means to pay to rural farmers, urban industrialists, and even the official detention centers run by Libya’s Directorate for Combatting Illegal Migration.

The country’s fractured territory, across which militias and rival governments vie for power, has inhibited efforts to end human rights violations. Compounding the problem have been aggressive European efforts to end the flow of arrivals across the Mediterranean, with countries like Italy and Malta now refusing to accept ships containing rescued migrants. Evaporating public interest globally and the exhaustion of political will threaten to exacerbate the problem as the crisis disappears from the European and American public eye.

Read

“Inside The Country Where You Can Buy A Black Man For $400” (BuzzFeed News | December 2018)

“Executions, torture and slave markets persist in Libya: U.N.” (Reuters | March 2018)

“Migrants Captured In Libya Say They End Up Sold As Slaves” (NPR | March 2018)

Study

Desperate and Dangerous: Report on the human rights situation of migrants and refugees in Libya (UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights | December 2018)

Libya’s Dark Web of Collusion: Abuses against Europe-bound Refugees and Migrants (Amnesty International | December 2017)