Onboard the Ocean Viking in the Mediterranean – Forty-two-year old Florent* took off his life jacket, knelt to the floor of the Ocean Viking, a migrant rescue vessel, and let out a roar.

On 11 November 2019, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch submitted a joint third-party intervention to the European Court of Human Rights in a case involving Libya’s abuses against migrants during operations at sea and upon return to the country in November 2017. 

The missile strike on a migrant detention centre in Libya’s Tajoura was carried out by a fighter plane from a foreign country, according to a confidential UN investigation seen by BBC Arabic.

The European Union is funding the Libyan coast guard to keep migrants out of Europe and detain them in a failed state—and that leaves them at the mercy of militias and human traffickers.

Since April, about 19 families, mostly Sudanese from Darfur, have been taking refuge in an improvised camp.

Many suffered human rights abuses, including beatings, extortion and rape during their time held in detention centres. Others risked being sold into slavery by traffickers and even death in desperate attempts to cross the Mediterranean or through being caught up in the ongoing fighting.

Rwanda has agreed to take in hundreds of African refugees and asylum-seekers held in detention centres in Libya under an agreement reached with the UN refugee agency and the African Union.

Migrants trapped in Libyan detention centres where many have been subjected to abuse would be evacuated to Rwanda under an emergency plan being discussed with international humanitarian agencies and the EU, The Financial Times has reported. 

Libya is to close three migrant and refugee detention centres after criticism from the UN over squalid conditions and inadequate food supplies.

A number of migrants in Libya have been moved to a detention centre in the capital that was hit with an airstrike earlier this month, despite a risk it could be hit again, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Friday.