The Italy–Libya Memorandum cannot be understood only through the language of borders, interceptions and migration management.

Behind that language is an economy of captivity.

People prevented from leaving Libya are not simply “contained”. They are returned to an environment in which Black African refugees and migrants have been abducted, detained, tortured, raped, enslaved, exploited for labour, held for ransom, forcibly recruited and, in some cases, disappeared or killed.

For many of us, these are not distant allegations. They are experiences carried in our bodies, our families and our communities.

Interception and Forced Return

People attempting to escape Libya across the Mediterranean are intercepted at sea and returned to the country they were trying to flee.
Return does not restore safety.

For many, it marks the beginning of another cycle of detention, trafficking, exploitation and violence.

Abduction and Captivity

Refugees and migrants are rounded up in streets, taken from their homes, captured while travelling or transferred after interception.

Some enter official detention facilities. Others disappear into trafficking houses, warehouses, farms, prisons and unofficial detention sites controlled by militias, armed groups or criminal networks.

Families may spend weeks or months trying to discover where their relatives have been taken.

Rape and Sexual Violence

Rape and other forms of sexual violence are not incidental to this system.

Women, girls, men and children have been subjected to rape, gang rape, sexual exploitation, forced prostitution and other forms of sexual violence in detention facilities, trafficking sites, workplaces and places of captivity.

Sexual violence has been used to punish, terrorise, humiliate and exploit people whose movement and legal status leave them almost entirely without protection.

A Violent Business Model

Captivity generates revenue.

A person can be abducted and a ransom demanded from their family. They can be tortured while relatives listen over the telephone until money is transferred. They can be sold or transferred between trafficking networks. Their labour can be exploited without payment. Their belongings and identification documents can be confiscated and resold.

A person who cannot pay may remain imprisoned, be forced to work or be transferred to another captor.

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The system created around containment therefore does more than prevent movement. It creates conditions in which refugees and migrants can repeatedly be monetised through detention, extortion, trafficking and exploitation.

Forced Labour, Enslavement and Forced Recruitment

Refugees and migrants have been forced to work in construction, agriculture, private homes, workshops and other sectors without payment and under threat of violence.

Others have been forced to perform work for armed groups, including transporting weapons and ammunition, repairing military equipment and supporting militia operations.

There have also been documented cases of refugees and migrants being forcibly recruited or compelled to participate in activities connected to armed groups.

A person prevented from leaving Libya can therefore become simultaneously a detainee, a commodity, a labourer and an instrument of armed power.

Death, Disappearance and Mass Graves

Many never emerge from this system.

People disappear after abduction or detention. Others die from torture, violent rapes, starvation, untreated illness or killings.

Mass graves containing the bodies of migrants have repeatedly been discovered in Libya, including at trafficking sites.

These graves are not disconnected from the politics of containment.

They are among the most extreme consequences of a system in which people can be intercepted, returned, disappear into captivity and remain beyond meaningful legal protection or public scrutiny.

Anti-Black Racism and Scapegoating

The violence is also racialised.

Black Africans are routinely exposed to racism, racial profiling, arbitrary arrest, exploitation and violence because of the colour of their skin and their perceived status as migrants.

Political authorities and public figures have repeatedly portrayed migrants as threats to Libya’s security, identity and demographic future. Such rhetoric has helped fuel mass arrests, collective expulsions and violence against Black African communities.

The same Black bodies that can be exploited for labour, ransom and trafficking are simultaneously portrayed as an invasion that must be contained.

This contradiction is not accidental to the system. It helps sustain it.

More Than Border Externalisation

For Refugees in Libya, the Italy–Libya Memorandum represents more than the externalisation of a European border.

It represents a colonial continuity.

European states seek to preserve freedom of movement and security for their own populations while financing systems designed to restrict the movement of Africans outside European territory.

Europe provides money, equipment, technology and political legitimacy. African territory becomes the buffer zone. Libyan forces become the gatekeepers. And Black African bodies absorb the violence required to make that border regime function.

The geography has changed, but the hierarchy is familiar: some people retain the power to move, decide and control, while others are confined, exploited and required to justify their very presence.

The Mediterranean border is therefore not simply moving south.

A political order is being reproduced in which African mobility is treated as a threat, African territory as a containment zone and Black lives as expendable in the defence of European borders.

This is why we challenge the Memorandum not merely as a migration agreement, but as part of a wider system of racialised containment, exploitation and colonial continuity.