The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) has advised the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) against adopting a resolution to end the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) on Libya in March 2023.

CIHRS urged the HRC to ensure that UN monitoring is maintained as long as gross human rights violations and abuses continue to be carried out in Libya with impunity.

In their latest report, the FFM documented crimes against humanity, murder, torture, imprisonment, rape, enforced disappearance and enslavement, direct attacks on civilians amounting to war crimes, attacks against civil society and journalists, as well as gross and systematic human rights violations against migrants in Libya.

However, in its draft resolution, the HRC aims to extend the mandate of the FFM on Libya for a ‘final, non-extendable’ period of nine months, to present its concluding recommendations.

Speaking at the 50th session of the UN HRC, CIHRS Director, Jeremie Smith, expressed concerns that the current draft resolution explicitly rejects the possibility of the renewal of the FFM mandate beyond a nine-month period.

‘This break from usual practice contradicts with this council’s duty to judge mandate extension based on a careful assessment of the human rights situation in the country and the needs on the ground’, Smith said.

‘By creating an abbreviated timeframe and dismissing the possibility of renewing the fact finding mission mandate, the resolution before this council sends a dangerous message to armed groups; that the international community lacks the will to ensure sustained and serious accountability process.

‘For these reasons and in light of recent events in Libya, we urge member states of the HRC to work to ensure the fact-finding mission or an alternative mechanism is created that sufficiently responds to the long-standing and urgent need to protect the victims and impunity in Libya.

‘Failure to do so will only encourage more violence and hamper efforts to ensure a sustainable peace’.

A decade of violence that has undermined Mediterranean stability since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising against Libyan leader at the time, Muammar Gaddafi, has not abated.

Freedom House ranked Libya as ‘not free’ in its 2022 Freedom in the World study of political rights and civil liberties, with the Maghreb country earning nine points out of a potential 100.

Photo source: Reuters/Hazem Ahmed