The short documentary Out of Libya proposes an insight of the difficulties for the migrants to escape Libya, by any existing legal route or mechanism, based on the testimonies of three people who were medically supported by MSF in Libya and/or after they left the country: Simon, Rosine and Even.

Simon is a Cameroonian who wanted to travel to Algeria but was tricked by smugglers into arriving in Libya. On arrival in Libya, he was immediately imprisoned. He spent five years in Libya and was imprisoned several times. He made seven attempts to cross the Mediterranean and was finally rescued at sea by the Geo Barents teams.

Even was an unaccompanied minor for years in Libya when MSF teams met him in Dhar el-Jebel detention center in 2019. He first attempted the crossing of the Central Mediterranean in 2018, after being tortured and victim of extortion. Its boat was intercepted by the Libyan coastguard and then he spent almost two years in Dhar el-Jebel detention center. During his years in Libya, he was registered by UNHCR as asylum seeker. Since he was not being evacuated by UNCHR he decided to flee by the Sea. He arrived in Malta in July 2020 rescued by the Malta coastguards. He again spent almost two years in detention in Malta, while he was still a minor.

Rosine fled Cameroon. While she thought she was going to Algeria she discovered that she was transferred to Libya and sold as a slave from trafficker to trafficker. Trapped in Libya, Rosine was evacuated thanks to a humanitarian corridor opened in Italy in 2021 by three local associations, the Italian government and UNHCR, allowing the evacuation of a number of highly vulnerable people, including patients treated by MSF in Libya. She was taken care of in MSF project for victims of torture and intentional violence in Palermo in July 2022 between July and December 2022.

Since the start of MSF’s migration projects in Libya in 2011, the organization has repeatedly faced the same challenges: the impossibility of protecting migrants inside Libya, of ensuring continuity of care for serious physical and mental conditions, and of rehabilitating victims of torture. Whether inside or outside detention centres, MSF medical teams have encountered migrants who are victims of and at immediate risk of trafficking, torture, sexual abuse, extortion and violence more generally. In March 2023, UN-appointed independent human rights investigators said there were grounds to believe that Libyan authorities and armed militia groups have been responsible for “a wide array” of war crimes, and crimes against humanity against migrants in recent years.

However, the safe and legal options for migrants who wish to leave Libya are very limited. The International Organization for Migration (IOM)’s Voluntary Humanitarian Return (VHR) program provides the possibility of repatriation to countries of origin. In 2023, 9370 people left the country with this mechanism. In addition, a limited number of those from only 9 nationalities who qualify as ‘persons of concern’ (PoCs) from the Libyan authorities and the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR)’s perspective are resettled in third countries each year. Between 2017 and 2023, an average of 1 500 people out of more than 40 000 registered benefited from this mechanism each year. Many more will attempt to cross the Mediterranean once they can pay the fare, with high rates of interception by the Libyan coastguard, supported by the European Union, and high rates of drownings.

In 2022, MSF published an advocacy report called Out of Libya that described the insufficiency of the existing exit mechanism for the people trapped in Libya, called for their strengthening and the opening alternative safe pathways out of the country.

Two years after the release of this report the European Union keeps externalizing its borders and supporting third countries such as Libya or more recently Tunisia to control migration south of the Mediterranean, with material and human resources for control, interception and coercion, causing death and despair. A recent investigation by Lighthouse Report in collaboration with Le Monde, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, El Pais, between others, proved that UE supports, finances and is directly involved in clandestine operations in North African countries to dump tens of thousands of Black people in the desert or remote areas each year to prevent them from coming to the EU (Desert Dumbs).