Security personnel stand guard as protesters gather outside the headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), demanding the organization 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.
(Beirut) – Libyan authorities have used incendiary rhetoric and pursued a campaign of mass detention and expulsions of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, sparking anti-migrant protests, Human Rights Watch said today.
Following months of incendiary anti-migrant rhetoric from authorities in the east and west of Libya, protests erupted on June 4, 2026, calling for the expulsion of migrants and refugees over rumors that they would be permanently “settled” in the country. Hundreds of demonstrators blocked access to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in Tripoli’s Sarraj neighborhood. The authorities who separately govern both eastern and western Libya have responded with mass arrests of migrants and detention in inhumane conditions.
“Rival Libyan authorities have united in fueling xenophobic protests and subjecting migrants to mass arrests, arbitrary detention in inhumane conditions, and collective expulsions,” said Hanan Salah, associate Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “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.”
Libyan authorities should urgently end arbitrary arrests and unlawful collective expulsions and release those held in abusive and inhumane detention conditions.
Libya has long been a destination for migrants seeking work as well as a transit country for migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees seeking to reach the European Union. According to UNHCR
