UN warns Sudanese refugees are stuck in Libya with nowhere to go

A migrant child is carried while being rescued by Libyan coast guards in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya. Reuters

Over 200,000 Sudanese have fled the war in their country and sought refuge in Libya, where they are exposed to human rights violations. If they do not receive help, they could travel on to Europe, says the United Nations.

The UN is ringing alarm bells on the human toll of the ongoing war in Sudan.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says that ten million people have been displaced since the start of the war in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Around two million of them have fled to neighbouring countries. Nowhere is their situation more critical than in Libya, where many hope to travel on to Europe or Tunisia. 

These pictures show Zamzam refugee camp and market buildings, outside the Darfur town of al-Fasher, Darfur region, before an attack on January 14, 2025, left, and on February 13. Keystone / AP

In January 2025, the UNHCR estimated the number of Sudanese refugees in Libya to be 210,000. They often arrive with no identity documents, which is illegal under Libyan law.

“That’s why Sudanese refugees are usually arrested immediately and taken to detention centres or police stations, where we as lawyers have to intervene,” Omar, a lawyer from a town in southern Libya, told SWI swissinfo.ch in Geneva. According to the UNHCR, in 2024 between 400 to 500 people from Sudan were seeking refuge every day in the district of Alkufra in south-eastern Libya alone.

Omar is a member of the Libyan Anti-torture Network LAN. He spoke on condition of anonymity, as lawyers and non-governmental organisations can face criminal charges in Libya if they help refugees.

An investigationExternal link published by his organisation, together with the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) in November 2024, showed that Sudanese refugees in Libya are exposed to appalling human rights violations. Despite their right to protection as refugees under international law, in Libya “they endure arbitrary arrests and detention, extortion, human trafficking, torture, gender-based violence and racial discrimination”, write the authors of the report.

Libya is struggling with its own internal conflict. A NATO-backed popular uprising ousted long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Since then, it has become a dangerous transit country for refugees and migrants. The country has two governments operating in different parts of the country and this, together with the many armed groups which control local fiefs, has led to an environment in which human rights are regularly violated.

Libya has not ratified the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, but has ratified a similar agreement of the African Union. This does not stop it from detaining refugees and asylum-seekers.

Illegal migrants sit at a temporary detention centre after they were detained by Libyan authorities in Tripoli, Libya October 8, 2015 . Reuters

Detentions

Together with other lawyers in southern Libya, each year Omar supports several hundred Sudanese refugees who are detained at police stations. His organisation works with lawyers throughout the country.

“Sometimes we can pay the fine required by Libyan law for release,” he says. “We get many people released if the police stations agree to prosecute them and a court case is opened.” If a refugee remains arbitrarily detained without trial and transferred to another location, it becomes difficult for the lawyers to track them. Some people remain in detention for years without justification, even if their whereabouts are known and despite complaints to the attorney-general’s office.

Sudanese in the south of Libya, where they first arrive from Sudan, face additional problems, such as homelessness, robbery and rape. Furthermore, Sudanese children and young people are often subjected to forced labour on farms. Omar says that the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have too little presence in the region. Children in particular are at risk there, he adds. Several died of starvation in September and October 2024.

Sudanese refugees in the south and east of Libya, which are controlled by the armed group Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF), are also at risk of being handed over to the Sudanese paramilitary militia group RSF and sent back to Sudan.

Several dozen men have been handed over to the RSF, Abdelaziz Muhamat, a member of The Committee of the Sudanese Diaspora tells SWI swissinfo.ch.

Onward journey to Europe

In the north of the country, where many hope to flee, care is better. In the capital Tripoli, they can register as refugees with the UNHCR, which has a presence there.

Even though Libya has not ratified the UN Refugee Convention, the refugees hope that registration with the UNHCR will offer them some protection or that they can be resettled in a third country. In effect, there are very few people that are resettled. Germany, one of the countries which has accepted most Sudanese refugees, has resettled some 450 refugees.

But for many the journey continues beyond Libya. According to the UNHCR, around 6,000 Sudanese refugees arrived in Italy via Tunisia and Libya between the beginning of 2023 and April 2024, almost six times more than in the previous year.

Many of those trying to cross the Mediterranean are intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard and forcibly returned to Libya.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, has repeatedly warned that Sudanese refugees could continue to travel to Europe if they do not receive sufficient support from rich countries.

“Rich countries are constantly worried about what they call ‘irregular migration’. But they are not doing enough to help people before they turn to human traffickers,” Grandi told the UN Security Council at the end of May 2024.

A majority of Sudanese refugees interviewed by OMCT and LAN also expressed a desire to settle in a safe country.

The European Union has supported the Libyan coastguard with at least €59 million (CHF56.7 million) since 2017, with military vessels, money and training to prevent refugees and migrants from entering Europe.

Those intercepted by coast guards and brought back to Libya often drown or are injured and then taken to various places of detention where they are mistreated, Mohamed, who works for LAN in northwestern Libya, tells SWI swissinfo.ch. This has been corroborated by testimonies collected by his NGO as well as an Independent Fact Finding Mission (FFM) of the UN Human Rights Council. They have also said proof exists of coast guards in the north of the country collaborating with human traffickers.

Migrants arrive aboard a coast guard patrol boat, after they were rescued in the waters off the island of Lampedusa, in Lampedusa, southern Italy, November 11, 2023. Keystone

The UNHCR and the IOM have long called for an end to the return of refugees and migrants to Libya for those caught by Libyan coast guards, as there is a risk that they will be arbitrarily detained and mistreated. The UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry condemned crimes against humanity against refugees and migrants in places of detention under the control of the Libyan authorities, including coast guards, in its March 2023 report.

LAN collects information about such human rights violations and passes it on to international organisations, such as the UN Support Mission in Libya and the UNHCR. This is the only way for LAN to exert pressure on the government, Mohamed says: “We managed to get three detention centers closed.”

Mohamed adds that refugees and migrants receive no respect even after they die. He shows photos on his phone of the bodies of those who drowned, some already decomposed, washed up on Libyan shores. These dead are buried in special cemeteries, but usually without being identified, he says.

No easy way out

Those looking to cross to Europe from Tunisia are stopped at the border and sent back to Libya, where they are detained in a detention center in Al-Assa, near the border.

According to Mohamed, there are around 700 people in Al-Assa at any one time. OMCT says that when the camp is overcrowded, they are taken to other places of detention and their personal details are not recorded. “Many people get lost here. They go missing, die or are tortured in other facilities,” says Mohamed.

In early February, two mass graves were discovered in the eastern desert of Libya. In Jakharrah, 400 km south of Benghazi, 19 bodies were found, while up to 70 bodies were suspected to be located in a second grave in the Alkufra desert in the south-east. The circumstances of the deaths and the nationalities of those buried there are unknown. Both graves were discovered after a police raid in which hundreds of refugees and migrants were rescued from human traffickers. Back in March 2024, 65 bodies were discovered in a mass grave in the desert in southwestern Libya near the Tunisian border.

“UNHCR continues to advocate for new opportunities for refugees and migrants to rebuild their lives, for humanitarian assistance and access to basic services in Libya and along migration routes where criminal networks are exploiting vulnerable people for ransom and abuse,” says the UN refugee agency.

Edited by Virginie Mangin/gw. Picture research by Helen James.