This archive report was first published on 23 June 2021.
For Aisha, a migrant from Guinea, the nightmare began when she was lured to Libya by a former classmate who duped her into becoming a sex slave. The young woman, who had fled her home country after five miscarriages, was diabetic and had been ostracized by her in-laws and community.
"I had left a nightmare only to fall into hell," Aisha said, recalling her experience in Libya. She was locked in a room with a toilet and only saw her captor when she was brought food, "like a dog".
After three months, a Libyan man took pity on her and threatened her captor, allowing Aisha to escape to Tunisia with 300 Libyan dinars ($65) in her pocket. She has since given birth to a baby girl and now dreams of Europe, but returning to Libya is out of the question.
"I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy," Aisha said, still trembling with the memory of her ordeal.
According to Mongi Slim, head of the local Red Crescent in Medenine, southern Tunisia, most of the migrant women who had experienced Libya had been forced into prostitution, raped, or sexually assaulted. "Some of them, if they had the protection of a man, they fared better. But for single women, it's almost systematic," Slim said.
Some migrants have reported being advised to take a three-month contraception jab before departure, and some travel with morning-after pills, according to UN reports. Mariam, an Ivorian orphan, left with 1,000 euros ($1,200) to pay for the crossing from Abidjan to Libya via Mali and Algeria, hoping to earn enough in Libya to reach Europe.
However, she ended up spending most of her year in prison, where she was sexually exploited, before fleeing to Tunisia in 2018. "I worked for six months with a family, then I set off by sea from Zuwara," a port in western Libya, said Mariam, 35. "Armed men caught us, took us to prison and abused us," she said.
According to the United Nations, official centres under Libyan government control, and where the European Union-funded coastguard transfers would-be exiles it intercepts, are also riddled with corruption and violence, including sexual assault.
"Every morning, a chief would make his choices and send the chosen girls to Libyans who had rented special rooms," said Mariam. "They fed me bread, sardines and salad. I stayed there a month until they moved me to another place," she recalled, her voice spiked with anger.
According to rights groups, men and boys are also sexually abused. "Sexual violence continues to be perpetrated with impunity by traffickers and smugglers along migration routes, in detention centres, judicial police prisons, and against urban migrants by militants and armed groups", the United Nations said in a 2019 report.
Such criminality increased with the intensification of the Libyan conflict from 2014. Three migrant detention centres in Libya were closed in mid-2019 and the establishment in March of a new UN-sponsored transitional government has raised hope of a decline in impunity and violence.
However, the UN has yet to deploy protection officers to combat sexual crimes, and intercepted migrants are still turned back to Libya, to the dismay of international organisations. On June 12, a record of more than 1,000 people caught at sea were sent back to Libyan jails, according to the UNHCR.
