The other side: migrants by migrants. The Refugees in Libya case

“It’s important because I am what they call. I don’t care whatever category that I have been given. A refugee, a migrant, an economic one, whatever. But I know that I am a human being who was forced beyond, you know, circumstances, beyond my human endurance from my country of origin”.

David Yambio is seated at the speakers’ table in one of the halls of the European Parliament in Brussels. The flag of the European Union hangs behind him. He is wearing a dark suit, a white shirt and a dark, slightly loose tie. He is elegant, self-assured. He starts his speech in a calm tone, but as soon as he begins to talk, videos of the violence suffered by victims at the borders of the European Union appear on the screen above his head.

“Not only have I witnessed what happens at Europe’s external and internal borders, but I am also a victim of it, because I have lived it and continue to live it”, Yambio continued, recounting his life. 

First, his flight from the civil war in South Sudan, where he was born in 1997, then Chad and then Libya, where he clashed with EU externalisation policies: violence, forced labour, attempts to cross the Mediterranean thwarted by the so-called Libyan Coast Guard, several spells in detention centres, more violence

“My life was suspended, my dreams stolen. Two years after my arrival in Europe, at only 26 years old, I should focus on my studies, on noble causes related to human life. Instead, we are forced to deal with the chaos created by the EU: the human rights violations, the deaths, the ongoing demonisation”, he concluded. The hall, packed for the event organised by parliamentary group The Left, applauds. 

Refugees in Libya: the origins

Yambio is a co-founder, as well as the best-known face, of the organisation Refugees in Libya, which started in Tripoli in 2021. It is small, informal and only recently structured, but it speaks to a growing need to document what happens to migrants. The videos shown in the European Parliament were in fact shot by the protagonists, sometimes by Yambio himself; in most cases, were sent to the organisation by other people who are still travelling, often stranded in Tunisia, Morocco, and especially Libya. 

Refugees in Libya denounce the effects of the policies of European countries and transit countries on migrants, while also promoting a different narrative of the migratory phenomenon and of migrants themselves: an autonomous narrative that sees them as neither threats nor victims, but replaces figures with personal stories, experiences and points of view.

The vocabulary also matters, reflecting a much stronger political awareness of migration than in the past. 

After facing the violence of the European borders, the migrants who are part of Refugees in Libya call themselves ‘survivors’. United by their common ordeal, they call each other ‘comrades’ and, as they denounce such practices and fight to change them, they consider themselves ‘human rights defenders’, who have the right to leave unsafe countries, such as Libya. 

“Here we are now to claim our rights and seek protection in safe countries” was one of Refugees in Libya’s demands from the very beginning, contained in the manifesto the organisation wrote in 2021, which begins: “We are Refugees and we live in Libya”. The document was written by citizens from 11 different African countries living in the Gargaresh area, on the outskirts of Tripoli.

On October 1st, the Libyan police and armed forces carried out a series of violent raids in the area, arbitrarily detaining thousands of people who, according to testimonies fathered by Refugees in Libya, were taken to “inhuman concentration camps”.

Even before this incident, the refugees wrote in their manifesto, Libya was “a nightmare made of torture, rape, extortion, arbitrary detention”, but the raids triggered something. Those who were not detained left Gargaresh to start a long sit-in in front of the UNHCR headquarters in Tripoli.

“Here”, the manifesto continues, “we understood we had no other choice than to start organising ourselves. We raised our voices. […] We cannot continue to remain silent while no one defends us and our rights”.

From anger to protest

This was not the first migrant protest in Libya. In recent years alone, there have been several incidents. In October 2018, a Somali migrant set himself on fire in the Tarik-al-Sikka detention centre in Tripoli, run at the time by Mohamed al-Khoja, the man who is now in charge of the entire detention centre management system.

A few weeks later, several migrants were ‘rescued’ at sea by the merchant ship Nivin and brought back to Misrata, where they refused to disembark in Libya for days, until they were violently removed from the vessel by the country’s security forces.

“They were called terrorists: no one stopped to think it was a protest. It was all they had: a physical protest”, comments Marwa Mohamed, head of advocacy at the Libyan non-governmental organisation Lawyers for Justice in Libya. According to Mohamed, migrants in the country are forced to “protest with their bodies because they have no other way”. 

A similar case occurred a few months later, in March 2019, with the oil tanker El Hiblu 1, whose crew rescued several migrants and then promptly broke their promise not to take them back to Libya.

As soon as they realised this, the migrants protested vigorously against the crew, who eventually gave in and headed for the Maltese coast.

Upon disembarkation, however, three of the migrants (aged 15, 16 and 19 at the time) were detained and are still on parole in Valletta, charged with terrorism for hijacking the ship with the crew on board. The Free El Hiblu 3 campaign was set up to defend them, with a detailed reconstruction of the events.

Its website said: “the Maltese state is trying to make an example of the three accused in order to deter others from similarly resisting push-backs to Libya”.

According to Martina Tazzioli, professor of political geography at the University of Bologna, this incident is yet another confirmation of a trend: “as soon as the very migrants we invite to be active and participate fight outside the canons of our media and political representation, they are criminalised”, she explained to IrpiMedia.

The participants in the Refugees in Libya protest outside UNHCR were first criminalised and then repressed. In January 2022, after about 100 days, the sit-in in Tripoli was forcibly dispersed and many of its participants arbitrarily detained.

Some, like Yambio, then managed to reach Italy by sea, but many are still in Libya today. This, however, did not stop the mobilisation from continuing, albeit in different forms.

Tazzioli herself, in a 2023 study written together with colleague Nicholas De Genova, reflected on the importance of those moments:

“Despite the violent repression of their protest and the fact that the migrants’ demands to be relocated to Europe were not met, this collective struggle was remarkable for its self-organisation and extraordinary self-representation through the autonomous production and dissemination of knowledge.”

In other words, the two academics argue, what matters is not the fact that the goals of the protest were not achieved, but the manner in which it took place. This was the inspiration for Refugees in Libya’s subsequent activities.

From grassroots action to networking

More than two and a half years on from the evacuation of the Tripoli sit-in, Refugees in Libya defines itself as “an organisation that includes refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, regardless of their ‘official’ status’”.

The latter is an important clarification, which reaffirms the political value of Refugees in Libya’s work and its opposition to the ways that Europe by EU and national institutions have framed migration.

The organisation’s activities include documenting and reporting the living conditions of migrants, which is done largely on social media; awareness-raising and advocacy actions, including Yambio’s visits  to the European Parliament, the International Criminal Court in The Hague and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome; and running a free, multilingual support line for refugees via WhatsApp, offering assistance to people in distress or directing them to an organisation that can provide immediate help.

These actions are all interconnected, with the support line often gathering useful materials for reporting and advocacy. More importantly, they are all carried out by Refugees in Libya in collaboration with several other European civil society organisations. As the organisation becomes more structured, the network of partners grows accordingly.

But it all started, in October 2021, thanks to a phone call.

“The first time I got in touch with them was when they were camped in front of the UNHCR offices in Tripoli. They probably got my number on the internet and called me. As soon as I picked up, I saw this sea of people, all huddled together, telling me about their plight. It was overwhelming”, recalls Don Mattia Ferrari of the NGO Mediterranea, which carries out rescue operations at sea and now collaborates with Refugees in Libya.

In those days, Ferrari recalls, there was “astonishment and wonder” because “such a mobilisation had never happened in Tripoli: they were very brave”.

“Before”, he continued, “public opinion in Italy was always split between those who wanted to help them and those who wanted to reject them, but migrants did not exist as autonomous political subjects. They have since become a subject”, Ferrari said of the migrants stranded in transit countries such as Libya and Tunisia. 

“Our task”, Ferrari continued, “was to put ourselves at the service of their leadership”.  Mediterranea did not do this alone. ASGI, the Association for Legal Studies on Immigration, for example, also supported Refugees in Libya in requesting entry visas for humanitarian reasons from the Italian embassy in Libya (which where denied), and then presenting an emergency appeal to the Court of Rome to get at least Yambio, who was wanted by Libyan militias for his activism, into Italy.

“We worked as a team trying to help them be heard in Europe”, Ferrari said, reflecting on the cultural complexities of this unprecedented operation. “Usually, the poor are not seen as protagonists but as passive subjects, who always need someone else to represent them”, he added.

With Refugees in Libya, however, this was not the case and “the centering of migrants, the fact that they represent themselves and have their own voice’ was ‘difficult’, he admits.

The work is still underway In 2023, the translocal network Alliance with Refugees in Libya was created during a meeting in Bologna. It includes organisations such as From the sea to the city, Alarm phone, Baobab experience, ASGI, Liminal, ECCHR, and Mediterranea saving humans.

Bologna was chosen for a very specific reason: it is there that Refugees in Libya is formally structuring itself as an organisation and planning to open an office.

A translocal network is defined by the promoters as “a group of local activists and supporters on the ground, but cultivating transnational relations that are still essential: with activists in other European cities, but first and foremost with refugees and active migrants still living in Libya”.

Strategic litigation

One of the main goals of Refugees in Libya and the alliance formed around it is to bring to safety the hundreds of migrants who participated in the 2021 protest, but are still in Libya.

“In July 2023, after 18 months of torture and forced labour, 221 comrades were released from prison and most of them are still in Tripoli, facing poverty, lack of medical care and the constant risk of arbitrary detention and physical violence”, the organisation reports. Other objectives are to strengthen the support line for migrants, to create an archive of all the migrants’ testimonies, and to guarantee refugees protection “through the development of strategic litigation”. 

The last point is especially important for the organisation, which, since its inception, has always been focused on legal issues, starting with its name. 

Technically, many of them are not refugees, as they have not been granted international protection, which is virtually impossible to obtain in countries like Libya or Tunisia.

However, Tazzioli added, “they have strategically appropriated this denial”. And by virtue of it, they are claiming protection, and the right to be transferred to a safe country. “On the surface”, Tazzioli continued, “it may seem like a victimisation process, but it’s actually a smart tactical decision”.

This idea also underlies the legal actions in which Refugees in Libya participates, particularly the strategic litigations that advocate for the protection of rights through individual legal actions.

“These litigations are not just about the individual, but for the benefit of all of us. We want to build something for the future”, explains another member of Refugees in Libya, Naeima Hussein Yaqoub, now a refugee in Sweden.

Together with Refugees in Libya, ASGI has brought a case before the UN Human Rights Committee involving five Sudanese families who were captured on May 3rd in Tunis and deported to the desert border despite having been granted asylum seeker status by UNHCR.

In the trial, the lawyers used photos, videos and audio testimonies sent by the victims themselves who had been contacted through Refugees in Libya.

“The Refugees in Libya helpline is a very useful tool to know what is happening on the ground in countries like Libya. Thanks to it, we can have knowledge even at a distance of events and dynamics that would be impossible to know otherwise”, comments Adelaide Massimi of ASGI. Front-LEX, another NGO that deals with strategic migration disputes, has also recently started collaborating with the organisation on the first case concerning Libya.

From reporting to recognition to impact

In late May 2024, the NGO Front-LEX sent Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, a formal legal notice to stop assisting Libyans in intercepting migrant boats, citing the case of Karim, a 29-year-old Sudanese refugee known through Refugees in Libya. 

If the agency does not act as requested, front-LEX is prepared to take the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg, where the organisation’s contribution to the litigation will be put to the test.

“The actions of Refugees in Libya carry a heavy moral weight, and as far as we are concerned, their voices must be heard first. Whether this will have an impact from a legal point of view, however, is still too early to say. We will see”, Cohen further explains.  

Whatever the outcome of the legal action, Hussein Yaqoub thinks that this effort has been a valuable one.

“The goal of these litigations is to denounce these cases, to bring to light and make them visible, and to win these cases to force the EU institutions to act”, she explains, announcing that the organisation wants to “intensify legal action to defend our rights, even for those who cannot take these steps”. 

“We cannot give up. This is something we do for those who will come”, she said referring to migrants who might one day go through the same ordeal that she, Yambio and so many others had to endure. “We’ve been there; we know it only too well. And we don’t want anyone else to feel alone in this situation”, she concluded.

Together with Refugees in Libya, ASGI has brought a case before the UN Human Rights Committee involving five Sudanese families who were captured on May 3rd in Tunis and deported to the desert border despite having been granted asylum seeker status by UNHCR.

In the trial, the lawyers used photos, videos and audio testimonies sent by the victims themselves who had been contacted through Refugees in Libya.