Since the 2023 coup, Niger’s migration landscape has changed dramatically, with new legislation tightening entry, stay, and movement, criminalising irregular migration, and granting broad powers to enforcement officers. In a joint submission to the UPR, the GDP, JMED Niger, and REMIDDH raise concerns over arbitrary and harmful detention, poor conditions, and abuse of migrants, urging Niger to amend its policies to ensure detention is used only as a last resort and in line with international human rights standards. […]
Libya
Suspensions to Asylum Applications and Extending Detention: Greece’s Increasingly Hardline Approach to Migration
Since early 2025, Crete and the nearby island of Gavdos have seen a sharp increase in the number of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants arriving from Libya. The islands have quickly become the newest frontline to Greece’s increasingly hardline approach to migration: in July, the government suspended all asylum claims for anyone arriving irregularly from North Africa for a three-month period. At the same time, a new legislative proposal is being considered which would tighten migration rules in line with the new, but not yet adopted, EU Return Regulation. This would introduce a slate of amendments, including the introduction of broader grounds for detention and an extension of the maximum length of detention. […]
Algeria: Detention and Deportation in an “Informal Corridor of Expulsion”
In recent years, Algeria has ramped up its detention and deportation operations in response to mounting pressure from Europe. Working increasingly with both neighbouring and European countries, Algerian authorities have conducted targeted raids, used an extensive network of formal and informal detention sites, and carried out (often violent) crossborder pushbacks to Niger and elsewhere. […]
Libya: The Latest Target of the Rapidly Growing U.S. Deportation Scheme
This week, Reuters reported that the Trump administration plans to deport migrants to Libya–a country long criticised by the U.S and the wider international community for its abusive treatment of migrants and asylum seekers. Just in February, investigators uncovered two mass graves in the southeast of the country containing the bodies of dozens of migrants, some bearing evidence of gunshot wounds. […]
Italy and the EU “Complicit” in Crimes Against Non-Nationals in Libya
The brutal treatment of refugees and migrants in Libya has been widely condemned and reported. Intercepted by the country’s coastguard and returned to Libyan “disembarkation zones,” non-nationals are placed in immigration detention facilities where conditions are inhuman. They face indefinite detention with frequent water and food shortages; overcrowding; physical mistreatment and torture; forced labour and […]
What Pandemic? The Persistence of Inhumane and Arbitrary Immigration Detention in Libya
The UN reported in January that there were more than 12,000 people being detained in 27 prisons and detention facilities across Libya, often in “inhumane conditions in facilities controlled by armed groups or ‘secret facilities.’” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that many of these detainees were being arbitrarily detained after the country undertook security operations […]
Kidnapped, Trafficked, Detained? The Implications of Non-state Actor Involvement in Immigration Detention
This article critically assesses a range of new non-state actors who have become involved in the deprivation of liberty of migrants and asylum seekers, describes the various forces that appear to be driving their engagement, and makes a series of recommendations concerning the role of non-state actors and detention in global efforts to manage international migration. […]
Immigration Detention Expanding in Western Libya
There have been numerous recent reports of mass raids targeting migrants and asylum seekers across Libya, resulting in thousands of people being detained in western Libya during the first week of October. According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), 5,152 migrants were detained in the raids, which were described by Libyan authorities as part […]
Libya: Where Immigration Detention Has Become a Crime against Humanity
The UN’s Independent Fact-Finding Mission to Libya has found that over the past five years, both state and non-state actors have committed such extreme levels of violence and abuses against migrants and refugees that there are reasonable grounds for concluding that war crimes have been committed as well as crimes against humanity. The mission, which […]
Libya: Covid-19 and Detention
Thousands of migrants and refugees continue to be detained in Libya’s network of detention centres, despite rising COVID-19 case numbers. As of 14 January, 107,434 cases and 1,645 deaths had been officially recorded in the country, although real figures are expected to be higher given a lack of testing. According to IOM and UNHCR, as […]
