How Libya's detention centres for migrants fuel corruption

Severe hardship defines the lives of migrants held in Libya's detention centres, turning them into sites of abuse that feed on the hunger, thirst and suffering of people sleeping on bare ground, despite national funding and international aid being siphoned off by corrupt actors.

Libyan human rights activist Ahmed Abdel Hakim Hamza said the extreme misery he witnessed among detainees in centres for undocumented migrants turns them into places of abuse rather than shelter.

"What happens inside them, in every aspect of daily life, falls short of the most basic humanitarian standards," he said, describing the catastrophic conditions in these facilities.

He said the situation extends beyond food shortages and the lack of clean water to sleeping on the floor, where hungry bodies lie on the ground.

This pattern is repeated in centres including Al-Sikka, Airport Road and Gharyan in Tripoli, the town of Al-Assah in the far northwest near the Libyan-Tunisian border, Ajdabiya in the east of the country and Sabha in the south.

The facilities hold overcrowded dormitories that are supposed to accommodate no more than 10 people but contain more than 50 detainees.

All of this is due to widespread corruption that has become the norm in the management of the issue, according to Hamza, head of the National Institution for Human Rights, a non-governmental organisation.

He based his comments on what he documented through regular visits carried out by his team, which monitors violations against migrants, between 2018 and 2025.

He said this amounted to stripping this group of its humanity, adding that the humiliating conditions have gained global attention.

A report by Human Rights Watch, published on its official website on 2 July, said migrants in Libya face harsh, inhumane and degrading detention conditions, including severe overcrowding, starvation, lack of medical care, beatings and sexual violence.

The policy of starving migrants

"At present, detainees are supposed to receive what are described as daily meals consisting of bread, cheese and pasta," Hamza said.

In reality, the food provided to them is rejected even by animals, the human rights activist said, adding that clean water only arrives at widely spaced intervals, sometimes extending to two months, forcing detainees to drink unsafe water.

This institutional disregard for migrants can therefore be explained by the fact that their bodies have become a tool for financial exploitation, benefiting those controlling detention centres.

The total value of monthly meals allocated per detainee reaches 220 Libyan dinars ($46), according to Tariq Lamloum, head of Beladi Foundation for Human Rights, a civil society organisation concerned with monitoring violations against migrants.

Lamloum said he reached this figure after hearing migrants' complaints during his repeated visits to detention centres.

Meanwhile, human rights activist Hamza said, after reviewing data from private food supply contracts, that the amount recorded for each migrant per month was 1,800 Libyan dinars ($382).

The huge gap between what reaches detainees and what is allocated for them is clear, the two sources said.

Given that there are 54 centres described as migrant shelters, the scale of corruption becomes apparent.

The centres consistently hold registered numbers of detainees that stood at 4,265 on 19 March 2023, while the number ranged between 7,000 and 10,000 detainees by June 2025, according to data from the United Nations humanitarian report.

Migrants continue to endure this deprivation despite the government-run Illegal Migration Control Agency in Tripoli receiving 2 billion Libyan dinars ($314.69 million) in allocations to manage shelters and provide basic needs for migrants from 2015 to 2024.

This is according to reports by the Audit Bureau, Libya's highest oversight body, covering the years from 2018 to 2024.

The reports also stated that accumulated debts owed by the agency during the same period reached 4.101 billion Libyan dinars ($651.1 million).

In addition to this are the aid provided by international organisations, said Mansour Al-Sahli, a former assistant to the deputy interior minister between 2018 and 2021.

Speaking to The New Arab, he added that international organisations do not provide cash support, but rather food, medical and pharmaceutical assistance, and armed groups benefit from it at the expense of detainees in these centres.

For this reason, human rights activist Hamza asked the attorney general, in a letter sent to his office on 4 September 2022, to prevent military units and unauthorised security bodies from overseeing the migration file and managing migrant shelters.

These included the 55th Infantry Battalion affiliated with the General Staff and the Stability Support Apparatus.

The response came from Attorney General Al-Siddiq Al-Sour, in a memorandum addressed to the National Commission for Human Rights on 23 January 2023, stating that the protection centre was affiliated with the Stability Support Apparatus, leaving the tragedy unchanged despite a memorandum numbered 302 that Al-Sour sent on the same date to the minister of state for cabinet affairs.

The memorandum stated that establishing centres to shelter irregular migrants requires taking all measures necessary to ensure compliance with international standards and the provision of all living and healthcare services.

"Despite this, armed groups in the west and east of the country continued to operate migrant shelters outside their legal mandate and receive aid provided by international organisations," according to Lamloum and Hamza.

The two reiterated that migrants continue to suffer from poor living and humanitarian conditions in the shelters, despite tens of millions being spent annually on companies and services that do not exist on the ground.

Institutionalising corruption

In the middle of last year, 2025, the duties of the Illegal Migration Control Agency were transferred to a department affiliated with the Interior Ministry of the Government of National Unity, with the aim of limiting security responsibilities to official bodies and ending any violations.

This came especially after the agency had managed nine detention centres, according to Salah Al-Din Abbad, a member of the crisis committee tasked with overseeing migrant detention facilities, which was established by a decision from the Interior Ministry in 2018.

Speaking to TNA, he said, "After migrant flows into the country increased since 2012, a general administration for illegal migration was established within the Interior Ministry.

“Before that, the second government issued a decision in June 2014 to establish the agency to control irregular migrants in the country, place them in shelters, monitor them and complete procedures for deporting them to their countries of origin," he added.

However, the exploitation of the circumstances of this vulnerable group increased the number of migrant detention centres under control, as armed groups entered the scene in the west and east of the country to establish and manage 45 centres.

There are no accurate statistics that can be relied upon to determine the funding provided to these centres.

"It is not because we failed to reach them, but because there is no database or records in the first place. This is the biggest evidence of looting and corruption," Youssef Bakber, deputy director of branches at the Illegal Migration Control Agency between 2016 and 2020, told TNA.

The above is consistent with what was documented in Audit Bureau reports covering the years from 2018 to 2024.

The reports noted that the Illegal Migration Control Agency had not closed its final accounts since it began operating in 2014 and that its expenses exceeded allocated funds, citing outstanding payments owed to local companies for food and supply costs from previous years.

The agency did not provide documents proving the existence of obligations towards these companies, their names or the amounts allocated to them, claiming that the documents had been lost.

The oversight reports confirmed that spending was carried out through direct assignments to companies without clear contractual documents, price quotations or comparisons between offers, in addition to the absence of official spending authorisations.

The Audit Bureau's observations during the same period also extended to the agency's entire data infrastructure.

The reports confirmed the absence of an accurate database of detainees, with repeated cases of names being registered in order to inflate numbers.

The bureau also noted in its two reports that migrant "voluntary return" programmes did not result in the actual removal of those who returned to their countries from the records.

This meant migrants who had already been deported continued to be counted on food provision lists, allowing financial allocations to continue being spent in their names.

'Everyone is manipulating the system'

The living conditions of migrants are worsened by the control of militias over most detention centres.

The most prominent and dominant of these is the Stability Support Apparatus, which established its own parallel administration under the name "Department for Combating Settlement and Illegal Migration".

The apparatus now has its own facilities, the most famous being the Al-Maya migrant shelter west of Tripoli, according to Abbad.

Abbad acknowledged the accuracy of the tragic conditions inside migrant shelters but rejected applying this description to all centres.

He explained that "it is not always permissible to place the blame solely on the authorities", because the issue of migrant shelters has a "long and complicated" path involving several official bodies, amid the dominance of armed groups over the facilities due to the income they represent.

The corruption has, of course, resulted in the waste of European Union resources.

The European Commission therefore became aware of the misuse of aid provided to Libya to manage irregular migration, according to a 2021 European Commission report.

The report confirmed that the failure of Libya's Illegal Migration Control Agency to monitor and oversee what was happening was due to its lack of control over migrant shelters, raising questions over the effectiveness of €55 million in support provided by the commission to Libyan authorities between 2015 and 2020.

In addition, widespread irregularities were uncovered in the spending of funds provided to the International Organisation for Migration in Libya between January 1, 2021 and March 30, 2024, according to an audit by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services.

This was reflected in the spending of $32 million, including $5.7 million on salaries for employees of partner organisations such as UNICEF, the World Food Programme and the International Rescue Committee.

In contrast, only $4.8 million was spent on healthcare services provided to migrants.

The audit cited weak planning and the absence of a clear and transparent spending mechanism, including the purchase of medicines without documented tender procedures, as well as the construction of a clinic at one migrant shelter that developed cracks in its walls after it was handed over.

Only then did manipulation in the issue of migrants' food and medicine begin to become clear, according to Lamloum.

Abbad pointed out that aid provided by international organisations often does not reach this vulnerable group, but is instead received by those running the centres.

"Who knows what happens to it afterwards?" he asked. "How can we say that it reaches them while their conditions are this bad?"

He noted that the only reason aid is delivered is when scabies or infectious diseases spread inside the dormitories, at which point the World Health Organisation or Doctors Without Borders are called to disinfect the facilities and distribute aid.

Regarding these violations, Al-Sahli criticised how organisations had not stopped providing migrant aid funds through armed militias while knowing that there was manipulation of their spending.

He considered what is happening as evidence of contradictions in the positions of international bodies on migration, saying that on one hand they complain about insufficient funding, while failing to ensure that what they receive reaches those entitled to it.

Victims of formal and informal economic cycles

Militias benefit from the economic cycle of managing migration either formally, through contracts, or informally, through enslavement and extortion, according to a European Commission report on violations of migrants' rights published on 27 October 2023.

However, the looting of aid provided by international organisations is a sign of a wider crisis, Al-Sahli said.

"How can we prevent the seizure of aid while organisations deal with armed groups without going through the Interior Ministry?" he asked.

He recalled an official meeting held by the ministry in December 2018 with representatives of international organisations, during which it urged them to register with the Foreign Ministry and provide aid through the body responsible for managing the migration file at the Interior Ministry, which would then deliver it to migrant shelters.

The aim, Al-Sahli said, was to organise the work of international organisations according to official frameworks.

He denied that the Interior Ministry had received funds from international organisations.

"As for their direct dealings with migrant shelters that are not controlled by the Interior Ministry or their contracts with local companies, that falls outside our responsibility," Al-Sahli added.

Perhaps this is why Human Rights Watch called on the European Union in July to end support for unaccountable armed groups in Libya.

At that point, the crisis could be addressed, even partially, by closing one of the most important corruption loopholes that feeds on migrants' bodies.

Article translated from Arabic by Afrah Almatwari. To read the original, click here.