Within the first week of the current United Nations (UN) campaign in Libya, “16 Days of Activism against Violence Against Women and Girls,” the murders of three Libyan women have made headlines.
Social media influencer Khansa Al-Mujahid was shot while driving her car near Tripoli. Gynaecologist Amani Hajja was killed by members of her family in the city of Misrata, and the body of a woman who was found in a basin southeast of Tripoli is yet to be identified.
Al-Sediq al-Sour, attorney general in Libya’s western political capital Tripoli has called for an urgent and transparent investigation into the crimes.
However, Asma Khalifa, co-founder of the feminist, Libya-based think tank Tamazight Women’s Movement, and research fellow at the German GIGA Institute of Middle East Studies, says she doesn’t have any hope that the investigation will be successful and that the perpetrators will be held accountable.
“Libya lacks the laws to protect women, and even if there were laws, there is no police to enforce them,” Khalifa told DW, adding that this basically amounts to impunity.
“There is no safety for Libyan women without accountability,” she highlights.
An attempt to create a comprehensive framework recognizing all forms of violence against women, including physical, sexual, psychological, economic, and digital violence, has been pending since November 2023.
During the kick-off phase of the 16-day UN campagain, Hanna Tetteh, the UN Secretary General’s special representative for Libya and head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya, reiterated the need for the law.
“Specifically, I would like to emphasize the urgency of adopting the draft law on protecting women from violence — a vital piece of legislation crafted by Libyan experts,” she said in a statement.
Libya’s competing governments exacerbate women’s vulnerability
“Violence against women is neither a new nor a sudden phenomenon,” Ali Omar, director of the UK-based non-governmental human rights organization Libya Crimes Watch, told DW. “The rate of violations has been high for years.”
However, many crimes are never reported, Omar says.
“Victims are pushed into silence as they are scared of their perpetrators, social pressure, stigma and social or religious interpretations,” he explained.
Furthermore, certain factors make it almost impossible to obtain reliable data, Ali Omar said.
For one, there are no reliable statistics about violence against women in Libya. The country has been without a centralized government since a NATO-backed revolt toppled and killed longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Three years later, the North African country split into rival administrations. Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah heads the Government of National Unity, or GNU, which is referred to as “Libyan government” on their official Facebook website. The administration is based in Tripoli and remains UN-backed and internationally recognized.
In the country’s eastern city of Benghazi, Prime Minister Ossama Hammad leads the Government of National Stability, or GNS. Hammad is supported by a strongman in Libya’s east, General Khalifa Hiftar, and his Libyan National Army.
Both sides are backed by foreign governments and armed groups.
Also, cases of violence are rarely reported to governmental institutions due to the influence of armed groups, Asma Khalifa said.
In her view, this vaccum leaves women in the crosshairs of political intrigues and violence of armed groups.
“Armed groups not only control the country’s resources, but also Tripoli, where they are vying for influence by fighting with each other,” she told DW.
It is not uncommon for women to marry someone “influential from an armed group just to make life a bit easier,” Khalifa said.
In her experience, this exposes Libyan women to a further level of violence.
“Since 2020, when I started tracking down news of women who have been killed, it has been mostly at home by their husbands who were either members of armed groups or previously fought in a war or experienced some sort of trauma,” Khalifa told DW.
Weapons in private homes are very common in Libya, she added.
Activists garner momentum
Khalifa also said that a large part of Libya’s population has normalized domestic violence, and that a desensitized view of it “remains quite prevalent.”
However, this might be changing.
At the end of November, Libyan activists launched an online campaign in Arabic that translates into “Do not marry a militia man,” following a statement by Emad Trabelsi, Minister of Interior in Tripoli’s Government of National Unit.
After the killing of Khansa Al-Mujahid, he had commented in a video that the police couldn’t do anything in this case. He also said that it was impossible to place a police officer in front of every house or car, and that crimes happen even in major countries.
On Monday, four days after its launch, the campaign had garnered more than 19,200 clicks and over 3,000 comments on Facebook.
Edited by: Carla Bleiker
