The lure of income from the sector lingers, and security actors have been found to be playing both sides by facilitating the movement of people as well as, at times, closing down smuggling and trafficking activities. A sprawling set of security actors that largely operate outside of the legal framework of the Libyan state therefore now plays a dual role as both enforcer of the state’s anti-migration policies and participant in the subversion of those policies. This duality has determined the ‘regulation’ of the sector, as Loop 7 shows above.
The result is a vicious cycle in which both people’s movement and the restricting of this movement have become profitable industries for armed groups competing and cooperating in Libya’s conflict economy. These dynamics have enabled what has been referred to as a system of ‘abuse-for-profit’ or a ‘trafficking–detention–extortion complex’, which is intimately tied to patterns of detention and exploitation (Loop 8). Put simply, the mistreatment of people moving has become systematized to fund Libya’s conflict economy by generating revenues through exploitation and abuse.
The extraction of funds through mistreatment takes a number of different forms. Armed groups affiliated with the Libyan state gain access to public funds via the administration and management of detention centres where people moving are held captive and imprisoned. Such access has turned the imprisonment of people into an industry that directly funds violent conflict. The potential for profit has also led to further violent exploitation of the people confined.
This violence, enacted beyond the captivity and including beatings, starvation, and sexual assault and rape, is central to three other funding mechanisms. First, further funds are raised through the extortion of detainees and their relatives. Beatings are used to extort ransom payments from family members in Edo State, Europe or elsewhere along the routes of movement. The nature of the extortion approaches was detailed by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights:
Second, violence is used to facilitate and exact compliance during ‘the “renting out” of detainees’ for the purposes of forced labour – for instance, on farms and construction sites. As one returnee described:
Finally, sexual slavery has become a defining feature of the exploitation of people moving through Libya. The women returnees interviewed as part of this research all highlighted confinement to ‘connection houses’ used for forced sex work, while the practice of trafficking women and girls for the purposes of (forced) sex work permeated all discussions. In many cases, men and women are transported separately, which facilitates such practices.
Though experiences of men being exploited through forced labour, torture and imprisonment are more commonly documented, further research has shown that ‘rape and sexual violence against both men and women’ have been endemic in the treatment of Nigerian people moving to Libya. Men returnees interviewed also highlighted experiences of sexual assault and rape: ‘They harass the girls, they harass the boys, they sleep with the boys’.
When combined with increasingly hostile European measures to clamp down on crossings of the Mediterranean from Libya, these complex internal dynamics in Libya help to explain why there has been a reduction – but not a collapse – in the numbers of people able to reach Europe. Most research participants in Edo State, including returnees, indicated that their ultimate objective when moving from Edo State was to cross the Mediterranean and reach Europe. However, over the last decade, as the conflict in Libya has continued, fewer people have successfully reached Italy. People are stopped while travelling through Libya, held captive in detention centres, deported, or, if they are able to start their journey across the Mediterranean, are sent back to Libya. In 2018, 49 per cent of the people attempting to cross the Mediterranean were returned by either the coastguard or smugglers.
Nigerians as participants and victims in Libya’s conflict economy
The number of Nigerians, and particularly those from Edo State, who are part of this ‘abuse-for-profit’ system is hard to determine. In 2017, ‘IOM [estimated] that as many as 100,000 Nigerian migrants were stranded in Libyan prisons awaiting repatriation’. In this same year, IOM reported that ‘of the 119,000 migrants who arrived in Italy, 18,185 were Nigerian, 5,425 of whom were women’, and that 4,316 Nigerians were returned by international organizations from Libya, 4,000 of whom came from Edo State.
IOM estimates that approximately 80 per cent of Nigerian women and girls arriving in Europe were subject to human trafficking and 94 per cent were from Edo State., These estimates mirror earlier figures from 2001 indicating that ‘[a]pproximately 95 per cent of the Nigerian women trafficked to Italy for the purpose of prostitution come from Benin City in Edo State’. Focus group respondents also indicated that while ‘irregular migration’ had reduced, human-trafficking had not, suggesting that traffickers have found new ways of circumventing authorities and that potentially more people are remaining in Libya. This may explain why the reported number of Nigerians crossing from Libya to Europe dropped to just 0.8 per cent of all people crossing in 2022.
While the movement of people predominantly flows from Edo State to Libya, there are also connections that go back the other way. These connections are mainly to manage the movement of people. This entails people from Edo State acting as participants in Libya’s conflict economy, illustrating the connections between exploitation in both locations. Comparatively little attention has thus far been paid to non-Libyan smugglers operating in Libya. Nigerians are believed to make up a significant proportion of these non-Libyan smugglers, and, by their own accounts, they do much of the work in getting people from Edo State to Libya and beyond.
Crucially, the distinction between people on the move and ‘smugglers’ is not as clear-cut as might be assumed. For example, among a group of 16 Libya-based Nigerians engaged in smuggling interviewed by the Mixed Migration Centre and Chatham House in 2018, all were or had been part of smuggling practices when they moved themselves. Others reported engaging in the sector as a means of funding their own travel, which they were still seeking to continue.
Nigerians present in Libya prior to 2011 – including those from Edo State – were well placed to enter the expanding smuggling business, owing to their connections in Libya and in their country of origin. But some Nigerians engaged in the smuggling sector noted that they had been compelled to enter the smuggling and trafficking business because their previous livelihoods had collapsed following the overthrow of Gaddafi and the economic catastrophe that ensued. One well-established smuggler, who claimed to have been in Libya since 2002, said he was no longer able to send money back to his family in Nigeria following the collapse of the local economy in Sebha:
Nigerians engaged in the smuggling sector use connections in Edo State, their common language skills and cultural affinity to recruit people, and are also believed to use these connections to exploit those on the move and their families, such as through the demand for ransoms. By leveraging their property ownership and territorial control, their Libyan counterparts skim off much of the non-Libyans’ earnings via rents or informal taxation.
Those interviewed acknowledged that such abuses took place, but often denied any personal involvement or gave justifications, such as ‘clients’ being unable to pay their debts. Nonetheless, abuses were noted by smugglers interviewed:
Interviewees also described managing activities that appear to entail trafficking. One Nigerian established in the smuggling business reported a ‘hire purchase’ model for Nigerian women operating as domestic workers in Libya. Under this scheme, the women were described as receiving payment for their roles once their travel fee was paid off. But it was clear that these women would have had little recourse if their ‘employers’ continued to withhold payment after this point.
Nigerians engaged in the sector stated bluntly that they had little control over much of the activity they were involved in, noting that they had little recourse if a rival Libyan armed group intercepted their convoy or if the people in that convoy ended up in detention. In some cases, however, the interviewees claimed to hold direct relationships with Libyan police and detention centre officials that they could leverage. These relationships reportedly included state authorities arresting Nigerians moving and releasing them into the custody of smugglers. Travellers also reported that smugglers would tip off the authorities about sea crossings, so that people moving would be intercepted at sea and prompted to try to cross – and pay – again at a later date:
These dynamics show the difficulty in distinguishing between Nigerian smugglers, traffickers and those being exploited by the ‘abuse-for-profit’ system – with far-reaching implications for policy. Together, these elements show the extent of abuses experienced by people travelling through Libya, the different mechanisms used to generate funds and the centrality of this transnational movement of people to the conflict economy.
