Security personnel stand guard as protesters gather outside the headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), demanding the organisation leave the country and calling for an end to migrant settlement and the deportation of migrants and refugees, in Tripoli, Libya, June 4, 2026. Picture taken with a mobile phone. Image@ REUTERS/Ayman al-Sahili
As the European Union deepens its engagement with Libyan authorities to keep migrants from reaching European shores, Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Brussels of bankrolling an accelerating campaign of racially motivated mass arrests, forced evictions, and summary expulsions, one that the rights group says has now crossed into territory involving armed factions with documented records of war crimes.
Both the UN-recognised government in Tripoli and its rival eastern-based administration have been carrying out crackdowns on migrants while stoking anti-migrant sentiment through what Amnesty described as “xenophobic and racist statements.” The group said the crackdown, which intensified over the past month, included forced evictions and the expulsion of hundreds of migrants, among them nationals fleeing war-torn Sudan, without any opportunity to apply for asylum or contest their removal.
“The EU has long bankrolled migration control in Libya with its support to the Libyan Coast Guard, which has already made it complicit in horrific violations and abuses,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa. “Extending this cooperation to eastern-based armed groups with records of committing war crimes and other abuses with impunity shows a shocking disregard, not only for international law, but also for human life and dignity,” she added.
The EU’s posture toward Libya has shifted noticeably in recent months. While Brussels formally recognises only the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity, since last year it has stepped up engagement with the rival eastern administration, backed by military commander Khalifa Haftar. That expansion of ties drew particular condemnation from Amnesty, given that armed groups affiliated with the Libyan Arab Armed Forces in the east, such as the Tariq Ben Zeyad Brigade, have continued to be responsible for a catalogue of documented abuses against migrants.
Libya has been a principal corridor for migrants and refugees fleeing conflict and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, seeking to cross the Mediterranean to Europe ever since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising toppled Muammar Gaddafi and fractured the state. The International Organization for Migration recorded nearly 895,000 migrants in Libya as of July 2025, while the UN refugee agency had registered over 197,000 refugees and asylum seekers by November of that year. Hundreds of Libyans gathered outside the UNHCR headquarters in Tripoli earlier this month to protest against migrants and refugees, demanding their removal from the country.
In a letter to EU leaders last week, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen defended the bloc’s strategy, citing a surge in irregular crossings toward Greece via the Eastern Mediterranean route. “We are providing targeted financial and operational support to strengthen border management, search-and-rescue and anti-smuggling capacities, and reduce illegal departures and the loss of lives at sea,” von der Leyen said, describing continued EU engagement with Libya as “indispensable.”
EU officials have long defended their cooperation with Libyan forces as a measure to prevent drownings at sea. Italy and the EU have supplied the coastguard with dozens of vessels, ensured their maintenance, and trained their personnel, while a Libyan search-and-rescue zone was established in late 2017 together with a Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Tripoli. But rights groups argue the arrangement has the opposite effect, returning vulnerable people to a country where, according to the final report of the UN’s Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya, systematic abuse in state-run detention centres amounts to crimes against humanity, to which the EU has been contributing through its support for interceptions.
The tensions surrounding EU-Libya cooperation were laid bare last summer when EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner travelled to eastern Libya for talks with authorities there, only to be expelled shortly after arrival. The European Commission, the Libyan government in Tripoli, and the eastern administration did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday’s Amnesty report.
By: Andrews Kwesi Yeboah