What sparked the wave of popular anger in Libya was the attempts to push through settlement projects, exploit the political division to sign and pass suspicious agreements, and bring them into effect. This amounts to tampering with a demographic makeup that has remained stable for thousands of years.
The root of the problem lies in the provocative concept of settlement adopted by international organizations. They view resettlement as a process that enables refugees to rebuild their lives in another country and become fully participating members of a society in which they can settle permanently. Yet this will not achieve the stability sought for them. Instead, it will tamper with the demographics and social stability of the countries targeted by this misguided remedy, which international organizations openly advocate.
Settlement projects, whether for migrants or refugees, in societies other than their own, without preparing them or reaching agreement with those societies, would amount to driving them into the furnace and corrupting the land and its people. Claiming to protect these groups while disregarding the cohesion, culture, and heritage of the societies into which they are transferred constitutes a deliberate attempt to harm those societies, at the expense of people fleeing their own countries under different labels, ranging from displaced persons, to forcibly displaced persons, to voluntary migrants, to refugees. These labels differ in meaning and in their underlying causes, but none of them justifies or permits their integration into societies of which they are strangers merely because there is a vast expanse of land in the "victim" country where they are intended to be settled.
Resettling migrants and conflating them with refugees in societies that do not accept certain behaviors that fall outside their traditions amounts to destroying social peace. This applies particularly to societies that reject the presence of certain categories of migrants who openly engage in behavior that conflicts with the country's culture, customs, norms, and even its religion.
Libya is not a country of origin but a country of transit for migrants. It has also become their victim and a substitute homeland, even if only a transit one, while the European countries that migrants seek to reach make no meaningful effort beyond attempting to export the migration crisis to Libya without offering any genuine solutions of their own.
Invoking Libya's sparse population and vast territory, and treating it as a suitable place to settle these people, is an affront to Libyan society, which is ethnically and religiously homogeneous and rejects attempts to tamper with this homogeneous demographic makeup that has existed for thousands of years.
On the other hand, the European Union asks Libya to act as a border guard for its shores free of charge, without contributing to these operations in any way. Yet European pressure may push Libya toward adopting tougher positions, particularly because it sees the proposed solutions as failing to serve Libya's national interests, violating its sovereignty, and tampering with its homogeneous demographic makeup. Libya is not responsible for a crisis created by Europe through closing its doors to employment opportunities for migrants, in addition to detaining them as soon as they reach its shores.
A solution at someone else's expense is the essence of how international organizations understand settlement: keeping irregular migrants in the country of transit, granting them a legal status that allows them to remain there, rather than allowing them to continue onward to other countries or return to their countries of origin. This harms Libya's situation and turns it into the victim of a solution designed to serve European countries' interests.
The divided political situation and unstable security conditions, particularly in western Libya, make the country unable to bear the burden of migrants at the expense of its own social or political security. This has further intensified both popular and political rejection of settlement in Libya, despite the weakness of some politicians in the face of Western and American dictates, in exchange for political recognition of governments whose terms and legitimacy have expired.
In Libya, Law No. 24 of 2023 on Combating the Settlement of Foreigners in Libya is clear. It criminalizes settlement and punishes with imprisonment and a fine anyone who participates in or assists in a settlement operation, whether legal entities, including government entities, or ordinary individuals.
Most Libyans, including activists, view the settlement of migrants in Libya as a genuine threat to national security. They believe it could lead to the spread of organized crime, increased foreign interference, the destruction of the social fabric, and the introduction of cultures rejected by Libyan society.
Many Libyans believe that improving conditions in refugees' countries of origin is sufficient reason for them to return. They also believe that the European Union would do better to contribute to the development of those countries and regulate labor migration rather than press for settlement, while also supporting voluntary-return programs. Libya is a victim of migration, not a cause of it, and it is not a country for settlement.
The problem of conflating refugees and displaced persons with irregular migrants and putting them all in the same basket has harmed both sides. Libya is not responsible for migration to Europe, nor is it responsible for the reasons that forced these people from their homelands, whether poverty, disease, limited employment opportunities, weak sustainable development, or the proliferation of conflicts and civil wars. Nor is Libya responsible for those who infiltrated its territory. They entered without the knowledge or permission of the authorities in order to acquire the right to protection, but instead infiltrated through smugglers and migration traffickers in the desert. Accordingly, Libya is not responsible for spending money on them or resolving their status at the expense of its sovereignty.
