• woodrow wilson center
  • ecsp

New Security Beat

Subscribe:
  • mail-to
  • Who We Are
  • Topics
    • Population
    • Environment
    • Security
    • Health
    • Development
  • Columns
    • China Environment Forum
    • Choke Point
    • Dot-Mom
    • Navigating the Poles
    • New Security Broadcast
    • Reading Radar
  • Multimedia
    • Water Stories (Podcast Series)
    • Backdraft (Podcast Series)
    • Tracking the Energy Titans (Interactive)
  • Films
    • Water, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Animated Short)
    • Paving the Way (Ethiopia)
    • Broken Landscape (India)
    • Scaling the Mountain (Nepal)
    • Healthy People, Healthy Environment (Tanzania)
  • Publications
  • Events
  • Contact Us

NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • Guest Contributor

    The New Slave Trade: Migration, Trafficking, and Terrorists in Libya

    August 29, 2018 By Alexander Farley
    Returnees-from-Libya

    While dismayed Americans watched the “zero tolerance” policy of family separation unfolding at the Mexican border, across the Atlantic, another shocking migration crisis continues to fester. Behind the grueling headlines of drownings in the Mediterranean Sea, migrants run a gauntlet of abuse through the Sahara desert to reach the Libyan coast. Armed militias and terrorist organizations across the Sahel profit by smuggling people displaced by climate, population, and security crises. While European policymakers struggle to cope with arrivals, their containment approach consistently disregards the root causes that force people to take such unimaginable risks. The high value of these human commodities not only exposes vulnerable migrants to torture, extortion, and even enslavement, but also provides funds for terrorist groups intent on attacking the West.

    Escaping the Sahel: Drivers of Migration

    Nearly 100 million people live in the Sahel region of Africa, a naturally arid area known for traditional semi-nomadism. Today, as resources dwindle and instability increases, people across the region are crowding into mega-cities or fleeing across borders.

    As the climate changes, regional temperatures, rainfall, droughts and flooding have all increased. A growing population—expected to double over the next 30 years—and poor land and water use policies have strained the environment, while over-cultivation, overgrazing, and deforestation for fuelwood have accelerated land degradation and desertification. Changing rainfall and vegetation has pushed pastoralists further south, increasing tensions with sedentary agricultural communities.

    At the same time, many of these countries are experiencing protracted insurgencies and deadly conflicts stoked by legacies of colonial marginalization and authoritarianism. All these factors have converged in the Lake Chad Basin, creating one of the largest and most complex emergencies in the world.

    The Libyan Route: A Windfall for Terrorists and Criminals

    In response to these crises, hundreds of thousands of migrants have tried to reach Europe through Libya. At the behest of the European Union, former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi prevented migrants from crossing from Libya to Italy, but after he was killed in the 2011 revolution, this enforcement mechanism vanished. Libya became the main route to Europe after the 2016 EU deal with Turkey limited arrivals through Greece, and the human smuggling trade is a major source of income for cities along Libya’s coast, with an estimated value of 325 million Euros.

    After Gaddafi’s fall, terrorist organizations established a presence along the desert smuggling routes and in some coastal areas. Al-Qaeda extracts revenue from smuggling through its deep connections to the Libyan black market. Before it was driven out of its stronghold in Sirte, ISIS imposed fees on passing smugglers. Other armed groups benefit by setting up checkpoints and protection rackets. Terrorists and militias also make money by kidnapping and torturing migrants for payments from their relatives.

    In 2017, Italy cut arrivals from Libya by 85 percent by providing coast guard vessels and striking deals with Saharan tribes and leaders of coastal cities. But these steps seem to have increased suffering and migrants’ vulnerability to exploitation. In November 2017, a shocking video of an open slave market near Tripoli forced EU governments to evacuate thousands of the most vulnerable migrants from detention centers. But with the sea route shut, an estimated 400,000- 1,000,000 migrants were trapped in Libya, where they remain vulnerable to forced labor, torture, and trafficking.

    The situation offers terrorists another opportunity to build ties with widespread human trafficking networks. More than nine million people in Africa are estimated be in modern slavery—the highest prevalence in the world—and the value of forced labor on the continent is estimated at $14 billion. Libya—which is rated by the Walk Free Foundation as highly vulnerable to modern slavery—is at risk of becoming a major hub in global forced-labor supply chains.

    A Migratory Future for the Sahel?

    Striking deals with security forces in Africa may have reduced Mediterranean crossings but it has conversely empowered militias that control detention centers and checkpoints. UN monitors have accused Libyan security services of profiting from smuggling and even sanctioned several individuals affiliated with the coast guard. Moreover, smuggling has become a major source of jobs and income in struggling Libyan towns.  

    What can be done? A proposed transnational security force backed by France to fight terrorism and trafficking in the Sahel could be effective—but only if fully funded. Processing asylum claims in migration hubs like Niger may also redirect migrants away from sea crossings,  but to offer true alternatives to smuggling these efforts must be greatly expanded.

    In the long term, people in the Sahel need sustainable livelihoods and peaceful societies that will allow them to stay in their homes even as the climate changes. Donors should invest in programs that seek to build community resilience by integrating climate adaptation, peacebuilding, and economic development in a holistic way.

    However to truly establish resiliency, governments in the West must be prepared to accept migration as part of the solution. The 2015 Valetta Summit, which promoted development-migration partnerships between EU and African countries, was a positive step, but actions so far have too narrowly focused on migration prevention and enforcement. Proposals for work exchanges like “skills partnerships” could fill critical labor gaps in receiving countries and stimulate sustainable development in the sending ones. But implementing these plans requires expanding legal migration—which requires stronger political will than has been demonstrated to date, on either side of the Atlantic.

    Alexander Farley interns in the director’s office of the Wilson Center. He holds a Master of Public Administration and Master of Arts in International Studies with a certificate in International Development Policy & Management from the University of Washington.

    Sources: adelphi, Al Jazeera, Al-Monitor, Center for Global Development, European Commission Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development, Fortune, The Guardian, Independent, International Crisis Group, International Business Times, International Labor Organization, Middle East Institute, Migration Policy Institute, The New York Times, Population Reference Bureau, ReliefWeb, Reuters, Time, United Nations Environment Program, Walk Free Foundation

    Photo Credit: Returnees from Libya, March 2011, courtesy of UNAMID.

    Topics: climate change, conflict, development, environment, featured, Guest Contributor, human rights, Libya, livelihoods, migration, Sahel, security
    • stephenverchinski

      “The necessaries of life for men in this climate make accurately enough be distributed under several heads of Food [and Water], Shelter, Clothing and Fuel; for not until we have secured these are we prepared, to face the true problems with freedom and a prospect of success.”
      Henry David Thoreau- Walden.

      I worked in Concord Massachusetts not far from Walden and the haunts of Thoreau’s contemporaries like Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson. His call was simple, live more simply and practice economy, use the resources of nature wisely, and protect the land that is wild. One student of his noted “he doesn’t just tell you what is wrong he shows you how to live a life of integrity in response.”

      Internationally we have to share information with regards to stopping the deforestation, providing for a better climate by not taking everything as being westerners as well creating the failure conditions. We also need to share our technology that’s appropriate and use it ourselves including solar hot water heating, solar cooking, passive cooling systems for housing. indigenous architecture. We can do a lot more to help our fellow humanity to know what it is to live in an area that doesn’t have all the resources that are necessary for survival. That said the issue of trafficing in humans is horrible.

Join the Conversation

  • RSS
  • subscribe
  • facebook
  • G+
  • twitter
  • iTunes
  • podomatic
  • youtube
Tweets by NewSecurityBeat

Trending Stories

  • unfccclogo1
  • Pop at COP: Population and Family Planning at the UN Climate Negotiations

Featured Media

Backdraft Podcast

play Backdraft
Podcasts

More »

What You're Saying

  • Rainforest destruction. Gold mining place in Guyana China’s Growing Environmental Footprint in the Caribbean
    ZingaZingaZingazoomzoom: US cleans up. China runs wild on free rein- A lack of international compliance mechanisms to hold...
  • shutterstock_1858965709 Break the Bias: Breaking Barriers to Women’s Global Health Leadership
    Sarah Ngela Ngasi: Nous souhaitons que le partenaire nous apporte son soutien technique et financier.
  • shutterstock_1858965709 Break the Bias: Breaking Barriers to Women’s Global Health Leadership
    Sarah Ngela Ngasi: Nous sommes une organisation féminine dénommée: Actions Communautaires pour le Développement de...

Related Stories

No related stories.

  • woodrow
  • ecsp
  • RSS Feed
  • YouTube
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • Publications
  • Events
  • Wilson Center
  • Contact Us
  • Print Friendly Page

© Copyright 2007-2023. Environmental Change and Security Program.

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. All rights reserved.

Developed by Vico Rock Media

Environmental Change and Security Program

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center

  • One Woodrow Wilson Plaza
  • 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
  • Washington, DC 20004-3027

T 202-691-4000