TRIPOLI – Libyan institutions, families of the missing and civil society organizations are calling for the adoption of a draft law on missing persons and enforced disappearances and laid out initial steps towards Libya’s accession to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED).
The calls emerged from a meeting on 10 September meeting that brought together about 30 people. The meeting was facilitated by the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) and the United Nations Development Programme in Tripoli, ahead of the 20th anniversary of the General Assembly’s adoption of the ICPPED. Participants included victims’ families associations and civil society organisations from Tarhuna, Tawergha, Murzuq and Derna; representatives from the Office of the Presidential Council and the House of Representatives; and representatives of the General Authority for the Search and Identification of Missing Persons (GASIMP) and the National Council for Public Liberties and Human Rights. The Ambassador of the Netherlands and representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross also joined.
Libya is not currently a party to the ICPPED. However, during a UN review of Libya’s human rights record in November 2025, Libya agreed to recommendations aimed at addressing enforced disappearances. These included criminalizing enforced disappearances, clarifying the fate of missing and disappeared people, improving protection and access to justice for affected families, undertaking institutional reforms, and cooperating with investigations into disappearances and mass graves.
Meeting participants agreed that joining the Convention would enable Libya to build on commitments the country has already made.
The head of the National Council for Public Liberties and Human Rights, Abdulmoula Antisha, said the first step is to bring Libyan legislation into line with the Convention’s standards, which is where participants identified both the main obstacle and the way forward. Members of Parliament explained that, under the applicable national procedure, a formal accession request must originate with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Department of Treaties and International Law before reaching Parliament for approval or rejection. Participants agreed to develop a roadmap towards accession and to engage the House of Representatives on it. The Council announced that it intends to publish an independent thematic report on missing persons in Libya before the end of the year.
The draft law on missing persons and victims of enforced disappearance, submitted to parliament in May and developed with technical support from UNSMIL and UNDP, was presented as one concrete step towards aligning Libya’s legal framework with the Convention’s standards. Parliamentarians presented its main provisions, saying a national law should cover not only search and identification but also the legal, social, economic, inheritance and financial rights of families, along with the protection of personal and genetic data. They committed to supporting the draft’s progress and ensuring it is consistent with Libya’s international obligations.
“We consider this to be a law of civil peace, a law of transitional justice, and a law that achieves the proper construction of a state,” said Abdulsallam Nassia, a Member of Parliament.
The meeting also commemorated the third anniversary of the 2023 Derna disaster, when catastrophic flooding caused two dams to collapse, sending a torrent through the city that swept away entire neighbourhoods and killed thousands of people. More than 400 people remain missing.
A mother who lost three of her four daughters described the night of 10 and 11 September 2023: the water rising through the house, the hours the family spent on the upper floor, and the morning that followed, when bodies lay in the streets and no rescue reached the neighbourhood.
“It was like the Day of Judgment,” she said.
Her account did not end with the flood. The family’s civil documents were lost with the house, and replacing them has meant travelling between cities, and she is renting in Tripoli with her surviving daughter, who is a year short of finishing university. Families said the psychological consequences remain severe, with psychosocial support still scarce and identification moving slowly. GASIMP explained that biological samples have been collected but that establishing DNA matches is time consuming and limited by resources, particularly because most bodies were affected by salt water, which degrades DNA. The electricity crisis compounds the problem, interfering with the maintenance of the equipment required for this work depends on and with the conditions in which recovered remains are preserved. Participants recommended increasing the authority’s technical, human and financial capacities.
Participants also called for the conditions necessary for GASIMP to resume operations in Derna and establish an operational presence in Derna and Benghazi. That would allow direct and regular contact with families, updates on identification, and the dignified return and burial of identified remains. Displaced people from Derna described difficulties obtaining identity documents and passports, accessing bank accounts and meeting basic costs while they wait for conditions that would allow them to go home.
Nabil Azzouz, a representative of Derna’s displaced people and the families of the missing, said the meeting produced a commitment to move quickly to notify families in cases where samples have already been collected so that they can bury their loved ones.
“Today we found people who actually listen to us,” Azzouz said. Three years after the disaster, he said, hundreds of the dead have yet to be identified. “Are we supposed to wait thirty years?”
During the meeting, participants also discussed ongoing challenges in other communities with large numbers of missing persons, including Tarhuna, Tawergha, and Murzuq.
On Tarhuna, families called for the urgent resumption of excavations at the site known as the Triangle of Death, where at least 66 missing people are believed to be buried. The obstacle is practical: the municipality lacks the bulldozers and other equipment needed to clear debris so that excavation teams can return. Participants urged the relevant authorities and partners to find a solution and to establish which institution is responsible for the delay.
Families from Tarhuna also renewed their call for victims and affected families to be formally recognized on the official martyrs’ list, with the entitlements that recognition carries, including reparations, and for that recognition to extend to victims of violations committed before 2019. A list of eligible families already exists. The representative of the Presidential Council undertook to follow up.
Participants pressed for GASIMP to be authorized and resourced to establish a permanent presence in southern and eastern Libya and urged the Office of the Attorney General to follow up on enforced disappearances cases. The authority said it is ready to work in the east and south but needs backing from security institutions and the Attorney General, noting that investigations require important resources.
On Tawergha, participants highlighted the need to resume excavations around the city, where families believe that a significant number of missing people are buried since 2011. The director of GASIMP said the authority is ready to examine the site but requires a mandate from the Attorney General. Participants also called for administrative procedures to be simplified so that families can obtain death certificates and exercise the legal, social and financial rights attached to them. Representatives of the authority told participants that cases are handled independently of political history and polarization, on the basis of families’ right to know rather than the affiliation of the victims. Participants also called for different affected communities to be represented in the bodies handling the file.
UNSMIL and UNDP set out their continuing monitoring, reporting and programme work, including a forthcoming report on Murzuq and the legal and psychosocial assistance the joint programme provides to families in Tarhuna, Tawergha and Derna, and reiterated their readiness to provide technical assistance for accession to the ICPPED and for aligning the national legal framework with international standards. Participants agreed to conduct a legal mapping of Libyan legislation against the convention, to press for GASIMP’s operational presence in the east and south, to resolve the equipment constraints holding up excavations in Tarhuna, and to bring the Tarhuna family association and the Presidential Council together on the martyrs’ list.
“God willing, we’ll go back in peace and bring all of Libya together again,” Azzouz said.
