During the oral update to the 44th session of Human Rights Cuncil, The UN seretary-general’s special acting representative to Libya called on Thursday for an “investigative mechanism” to be established for human rights abuses.
Stephanie Williams told the UN’s Human Rights Council that the body should establish the mechanism “given the ongoing serious violations occurring every day in the country.”
She also said that civilians in Libya continue to suffer disproportionately. One million people are now in need of some form of humanitarian assistance, including 400,000 internally displaced Libyans, along with 654,000 migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. In the last year alone, 225,000 Libyans were forced to flee their homes, mostly in and around the capital, with the latest wave of displacement having occurred following the Government of National Accord’s (GNA) takeover of Tarhouna earlier this month.
From April 2019 until General Haftar’s forces were driven from south Tripoli, the two million residents of the capital experienced almost constant bombardment, frequent water and electricity cuts, a situation now compounded by restricted movement as a result of preventive COVID-19 measures.
Between 1 April and 11 June of this year, civilian casualties further increased dramatically, with UNSMIL documenting 250 civilian casualties, including 82 civilians killed and 168 civilians injured. In 2020, WHO documented at least 21 attacks on medical facilities, ambulances and medical personnel, in one of the most shocking ongoing manifestations of this conflict.
UNSMIL has also received reports of hundreds of enforced disappearances, torture, killings and displacement of entire families in Tarhouna over recent years.