Human Rights Watch has warned that thousands of vulnerable people have been subjected to arbitrary arrests, inhumane detention, and unlawful collective expulsions following weeks of inflammatory anti-migrant rhetoric.

Human Rights Watch accused rival administrations in the country’s east and west of conducting a coordinated crackdown on migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. This has put Libyan authorities under renewed international scrutiny.

According to the Human Rights Watchdog, the campaign intensified after anti-migrant protests broke out in Tripoli, the country’s capital, on June 4. Protesters demanded that foreigners be expelled due to baseless allegations that foreign organisations planned to permanently settle migrants in Libya.

In the city’s Sarraj district, hundreds of protesters blocked access to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), escalating political tensions over migration in a nation that has long been a major transit route for people trying to reach Europe as well as a destination for migrant workers.

Authorities in both eastern and western Libya, according to Human Rights Watch, responded to the disturbance by stepping up mass arrests and deportation campaigns against migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers rather than by allaying popular fears.

The group claims that thousands of foreign people have been detained by security personnel, many of whom are being held in conditions that violate international human rights standards and are in danger of being expelled collectively without having their individual protection needs evaluated.

According to Hanan Salah, Associate Middle East and North Africa Director at Human Rights Watch, “rival Libyan authorities have united in fuelling xenophobic protests and subjecting migrants to mass arrests, arbitrary detention in inhumane conditions, and collective expulsions.”

“With thousands of people detained and at risk of expulsion, the scale of the abuses, and the urgency of stopping them, could not be clearer.”
Hanan Salah

The organization urged Libyan authorities to immediately halt arbitrary arrests, release those detained without due process and end collective deportations that it says breach international human rights and refugee law.

The latest developments unfold against the backdrop of one of Africa’s most complex displacement crises. Libya continues to host large numbers of migrants and refugees despite years of political instability and armed conflict.

According to UNHCR, more than 110,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers were living in Libya as of April 2026. The country has also become home to an estimated 559,000 Sudanese refugees who fled the devastating conflict that erupted in Sudan in April 2023.

After false information surfaced indicating that international organisations intended to permanently resettle refugees inside Libya, the migration debate became more heated. On June 9, however, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya explicitly denied the assertions, stating that UNHCR does not have a scheme in place to permanently settle migrants in the nation.

Rather, international organisations are still concentrating on voluntary return programs and humanitarian protection. For instance, since 2015, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has run its Voluntary Humanitarian Return program to help migrants who want to safely return to their home countries.

Mass Detentions Prompt Renewed Calls for Action

According to Human Rights Watch, Libyan security forces and affiliated armed groups have dramatically intensified detention and deportation operations across both eastern and western regions of the country.

The GNU Interior Ministry announced on June 6 that police had launched field operations to identify and detain migrants accused of violating residency regulations. Days later, authorities confirmed the deportation of a group of Egyptian nationals to Egypt.

In eastern Libya, the Directorate to Counter Illegal Migration disclosed that, acting on instructions from the Libyan Arab Armed Forces, authorities had detained more than 7,596 people of various nationalities pending deportation while expelling 10,133 migrants in recent months.

According to Human Rights Watch, the crackdown widened further on June 23 when eastern-based Prime Minister Osama Hammad issued a decree prohibiting nationals of Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia from entering Libya.

Human Rights Watch stated the latest operations continue a pattern of collective expulsions that has become increasingly common in recent years. In March 2025, Libyan authorities announced plans to deport 100,000 migrants, refugees and asylum seekers every four months.

Earlier that year, officials forcibly returned 150 Nigerian women and children alongside more than 600 Nigerien nationals to their countries of origin.

The Human Rights Watchdog also highlighted findings from a February 2026 United Nations report documenting systematic abuses against migrants. According to the report, foreign nationals are frequently arrested at gunpoint, transferred to detention centres without judicial oversight and deported without individual assessments. Many are reportedly abandoned in remote desert regions along Libya’s southern borders without adequate access to food, water or medical care.

According to Human Rights Watch, these actions exacerbate long-standing worries about the conditions in Libyan prisons.

The organization’s earlier studies revealed extreme overcrowding, ongoing food shortages, poor healthcare, physical abuse, and sexual violence in detention facilities. The UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya came to the conclusion in 2023 that abuses of refugees and asylum seekers in these facilities would qualify as crimes against humanity.

The watchdog called on Libyan authorities to promptly free migrants detained without charge or due process, put an end to harsh detention procedures, and cease deportations that don’t take into account people’s protection requirements or provide them with legal representation.

It also called on Libya to formally recognise UNHCR and allow the agency unrestricted access to all detention centres so it can fulfil its international protection mandate.

Human Rights Watch further appealed to the European Union and its member states to reconsider their cooperation with Libyan security forces, arguing that continued financial and operational support risks contributing to ongoing abuses.