The United Nations recent report on the critical conditions of migrants in Libya is a part of international pressure on the country to settle the Libyan crisis, spokesman for the Libyan Naval forces, Brigadier General Ayoub Qassem, said on Saturday.
Qassem accused international organizations of “double standards” when putting a plan into effect to resolve the crisis.
He added that Libya rejects such double standards, and that these organizations have not taken any actions to tackle the problems in Libya except for putting pressure on Libya using human rights’ conditions in Libya.
On Thursday, the United Nations political mission in Libya (UNSMIL) and the UN human rights office (OHCHR) issued a report, which points out to the status of migrants and refugees who are being subjected to “unimaginable horrors” from the moment they enter Libya and throughout their stay in the country.
“There is a local and international failure to handle this hidden human calamity that continues to take place in Libya,” said Ghassan Salamé, who heads UNSMIL.
The findings of the report are based on 1,300 first-hand accounts gathered by UN human rights staff in Libya, as well as from migrants who have returned to Nigeria, or managed to reach Italy, tracing the entire journey of migrants and refugees from Libya’s southern border during a 20-month period up to August 2018.
They said migrants in Libya are subjected to ill-treatment inside insanitary detention centers, starvation, unlawful killings, detention, torture, gang rape, slavery, and human trafficking.
It added that around 29,000 migrants were returned to Libya by the Coast Guard in early 2017 and were placed in detention centers where thousands remain indefinitely and arbitrarily, without due process or access to lawyers or consular services.
