A new UN report says migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are being rounded up and abused in Libya.
Published on February 17, 2026
The United Nations has given this warning Immigrants in LibyaIncluding young girls, there is a risk of being killed, tortured, raped or forced into domestic slavery.
According to a UN Human Rights Office report released on Tuesday, migrants, asylum seekers and refugees are forcibly abducted and imprisoned for long periods of time until they are sold or the kidnappers receive a ransom from relatives.
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“They are held in detention for long periods of time and forced to pay for their release through torture and inhumane treatment,” the report titled. “Business as Usual”.
The report is based on interviews with nearly 100 migrants between January 2024 and November 2025, both inside and outside Libya.
“This violation is executed through a business model – one that turns human mobility into supply chains and human suffering into profit,” the report said.
“Arrests have become a revenue stream in an exploitative, profit-driven system. Survival depends on payment. Those without money are passed on, sold or liquidated.”
‘Journey to Hell’
Libya has become a transit route for migrants from South Asia, the Middle East and Africa fleeing conflict and poverty since the fall of 2011 and traveling across the Mediterranean to Europe. Dictator Muammar Gaddafi A NATO-backed uprising. Since 2014, factional conflict has divided the country between rival western and eastern administrations.
In recent years, the European Union has supported and trained the Libyan Coast Guard, which returns migrants stopped at sea to detention centers, and funded Libyan border management programs.
Suki Nagra, the UN human rights representative for Libya, described the situation as “horrendous”.
“We are seeing waves of racist and xenophobic hate speech and attacks against migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, as well as blockades at sea where people are being sent back to Libya – which we do not consider a safe place to disembark and return,” she said.
The UN report cited an unnamed Eritrean woman who was held for six weeks in a human trafficking home in Tobruk, eastern Libya.
“I wish I was dead. It was a hellish journey. I was raped many times by different men. 14-year-old girls are raped every day,” she said. After her family paid the ransom, the criminals released her.
A woman from Nigeria identified as Gloria was forced into marriage at the age of 15.People come there to buy people, to buy people. They forced me into prostitution. I stayed there for a long time before I ran away,” she said.
The report emphasizes the importance of life-saving search and rescue operations for migrants at sea, but calls on the international community to halt returns to Libya until adequate human rights protections are ensured.
