Over 12,000 detainees are held officially in 27 prisons and detention facilities across Libya and thousands more are held illegally and often in "inhumane conditions in facilities controlled by armed groups or `secret' facilities," the United Nations chief said in a new report. "I remain gravely concerned by the continuing violations of the human rights of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Libya," Guterres said in the report to the U.N. Security Council. Oil-rich Libya has been engulfed in chaos since a NATO-backed uprising collapsed and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. Both refugees and migrants find themselves in a highly vulnerable situation, at the mercy of smugglers who facilitate their transport through the desert to Libya, within Libya and across the Mediterranean Sea. As of Dec. 14, the Coast Guard stopped 30,990 migrants and refugees and returned them to Libya, "almost three times the total number of people returned in 2020 (12,000 people)."

Source: Libya Today January 18, 2022 15:21 UTC