Migrants For Sale: Slave Trade In Libya - UN Considers Sanctions To Fight Libya Slave Trade

09 November 2017

By Creede Newton, Al Jazeera And Agencies

African refugees have long used Libya as gateway to Europe, but many are now facing abuse, exploitation and trafficking.

Libya's UN-backed government says it is investigating allegations that hundreds of African refugees and migrants passing through Libya are being bought and sold in modern-day slave markets.

According to reports, the trade works by preying on the tens of thousands of vulnerable people who risk everything to get to Libya's coast and then across the Mediterranean into Europe - a route that's been described as the deadliest route on earth.

Libya is the main gateway for people attempting to reach Europe by sea, with more than 150,000 people making the crossing in each of the past three years.

"They [the refugees] are from several African countries and they say they have fled war, poverty and unemployment in their countries ... They have taken a tough journey through the desert and they have paid people smugglers to get to Libya to try to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. With the security and financial collapse in Libya, human trafficking and smuggling have become a booming trade," says Mahmoud Abdelwahed, reporting from a detention centre in the Libyan capital Tripoli.

There is no proper registration process for the tens of thousands of refugees arriving in Libya.

According to reports, the business of detention centres is unsupervised in some parts of Libya and stories of torture, rape and forced labour have emerged.

When the centres get too crowded, people are then allegedly sold off like goods in an open market. Survivors have told the UN's migration agency that they use smartphones to connect with people smugglers to get them to Libya's coast, and that they were then sold, being held for ransom, used as forced labour or for sexual exploitation.

The International Organization for Migration says trade in humans has become so normalised that people are being bought and sold in public for as little as $400.

"As shocking as it seems, it's indeed true," Leonard Doyle from the International Organization for Migration tells Counting the Cost. "The reason it [slave trade] can happen is because there is really no rule of law across much of Libya. Libya is a country as big as France, with a lot of space there. Migrants are coming there ... they see the promise of a new life when they go to their Facebook feed and they think something wonderful is waiting for them in Europe, because a smuggler has abused the system and has sold them that lie."

He explains that when they arrive in Libya, "they get off the bus and they are quickly put into a kind of murder machine, an extortion machine. They are robbed of their possessions, their families are called. They are forced, they are tortured, they give them money. And then they are sold. Unbelievable, but they are sold in open, public auctions: $400 for a labouring man, maybe a bit more for a woman who can be put in the sex trade. And this is what's happening across the country."

Doyle stresses that this issue shows that the international community should pay more attention to post-Gaddafi Libya.

"There is an international responsibility to help ... What is particularly important now is that this issue is reaching global attention," says Doyle.

"Modern-day slavery is widespread around the world and Libya is by no means unique. It's happening in the developed countries of the world as well as the undeveloped countries. But what's particularly shocking is that this is happening effectively in the open, where people can go to a farmhouse, place a bid and end up 'owning' a human being."

UN considers sanctions to fight Libya slave trade

By Creede Newton

France's ambassador to the UN has urged the Security Council to impose sanctions on the people involved in Libya's slave trade of African refugees and migrants.

Francois Delattre's comments come as human trafficking in Libya has become a burning topic since a CNN investigation produced footage of West Africans being sold at slave markets in November.

"France will propose to assist the sanctions committee ... in identifying responsible individuals and entities for trafficking through Libyan territory," he told the council on Tuesday.

The UN Security Council held an emergency session to discuss the possibility of sanctions against individuals and entities, and of applying the full range of international law including the use of the international criminal court - but the session ended without resolution.

The head of the UNHCR has called for funds, in addition to words, to fight the modern-day slave trading.

"We count upon support of the members of the council to make headway to that end."

A sanctions programme set up in 2011, the year of the US-supported invasion of Libya which saw the overthrow of long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi, allows the Security Council to place sanctions on "individuals and entities involved in or complicit in ordering, controlling, or otherwise directing, the commission of serious human rights abuses against persons in Libya".

Slavery and human trafficking have been present in Libya for years.

"This has been going for quite some time," Omar Turbi, a Libyan human rights defender, told Al Jazeera.

Even under Gaddafi, Libya "struggled" with arms trafficking, drug trafficking and human trafficking, according to Turbi, who has worked with the US government to save lives in the North African country.

Libya descended into a civil war in 2014 and is widely considered a failed state.

There are competing governments - the National Transition Council recognised by the UN and the Khalifa Haftar government which controls more territory - and the presence of groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group and al-Qaeda that control large expanses of territory.

'Treated like cattle'

Other members of the Security Council have condemned modern-day slavery in Libya.

"To see the pictures of these men being treated like cattle, and to hear the auctioneer describe them as, quote, 'big strong boys for farm work,' should shock the conscience of us all," Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council last week.

"There are few greater violations of human rights and human dignity than this."

Asked if sanctions could help end the sale of human beings in Libya, Turbi, the rights defender, said he was not sure.

"It's going to be extremely hard to control the borders," he told Al Jazeera.

"What is really needed is work to institute a viable government in Libya, not a failed state. The government in Libya is helpless."

Turbi also pointed to human traffickers in Europe, specifically Italy and Malta, who he said are not being confronted by their governments.

Source: Al Jazeera News 

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