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World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Libya : Overview

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Environment

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Libya, located on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, is the continent's fourth largest country. It borders Egypt Sudan, Chad, Algeria and Tunisia. Most of the country's south is a sparsely populated desert. Libya has rich reserves of oil and natural gas.

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Peoples

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Main languages: Arabic, Berber (Tamazight)

Main religions: Islam

Main minority groups: Berber (Amazigh) est. 236,000 to 590,000 (4-10%), Tuareg est. 17,000 (0.3%), foreigners, 600,000 documented (10%) and 1.1-1.2 million undocumented (18-20%)

[Note: Reliable statistics for Libya are unavailable. Estimates for the numbers of Berber speakers vary between 4 and ten per cent. These percentages are based on the range of estimated percentages and the 2006 CIA estimate for Libya's total population, 5.9 million. The number for Tuareg comes from Ethnologue, 1993. The numbers for foreigners are Libyan government figures cited by HRW in 2006.]

Demographic data for Libya is scarce, but around 90 per cent of the population belong to the Arabic-speaking majority of mixed Arab-Berber ancestry. The Sunni branch of Islam is the official and nationally dominant political, cultural and legal force. Berbers who retain the Berber language and customs are the largest non-Arab minority. Estimates of their numbers vary wildly, between four and ten per cent of the population; they are concentrated in small isolated villages in the west. Other minorities include the Arabic-speakers of West African ancestry who inhabit the southern oases, and the Berber-related Tuareg and Tebu (Toubou) in the south.

Tuareg number a few thousand in Libya. Once traders on the north-south Sahara caravan route, the ending of this and the 'pacification' of the desert deprived Tuareg of their traditional way of life and reduced many to penury. Tuareg adhere to a form of Sunni Islam intermeshed with Sudanese and West African beliefs in sorcery and witchcraft. Marriages are monogamous and women have a high status in Tuareg society. Both men and women wear veils as a protection against dust storms.

Tebu live in the south of the country. Though converted to Islam by Sanussi missionaries in the nineteenth century, Tebu retain many of their earlier religious beliefs and practices. Their language is related to a Nigerian language. Centred in the Tibesti mountains and other parts of southern Libya, early Tebu economy was based on pastoralism with the margins of survival widened by caravanning, slavery and raiding. In the latter half of the nineteenth century Tebu mobility was curtailed by conquest and policing of the southern desert, first by colonial powers and later by the independent states of Libya and Chad. Since the second half of the twentieth century Tebu have been administered from centres such as Benghazi and Baida in Libya.

There are important numbers of Palestinian and sub-Saharan African refugees and migrants in Libya.

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History

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Berbers have lived in Libya for millennia. Parts or all of today's Libya were conquered by Phoenicia, Carthage, Ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire before Arabs moved into the region in the seventh century. Berbers and other indigenous peoples began adopting Islam and the Arabic language. After centuries of continued foreign rule by Ottoman Turks beginning in 1551, followed by Italy, France and Britain, Libya gained independence in 1951 as the United Kingdom of Libya. In 1969, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi led a military coup that ended the monarchy and proclaimed the Libyan Arab Republic. In 1977 the country's official name changed to Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (state of the masses).

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Governance

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Since 1959 petroleum and gas have financed the transformation of Libya from a poor nation at the time of independence to a rich one with vast sums to spend on social, agricultural and military development. The country is loosely governed on the basis of the Qur'an and sharia law, as well as Gaddafi's 'Green Book', published in 1975. The book rejected western liberal democracy, arguing instead for a form of direct democracy, institutions for which Gaddafi subsequently created. In practice Gaddafi has ruled as an unchecked dictator.

Gaddafi has varyingly attempted to lead pan-Arab and pan-African movements. He has provided support to rebellions across the Middle East and the African continent. This included support to the African National Congress battling Apartheid in South Africa, but more often has involved training and sponsorship of warlords and despots, including Charles Taylor of Liberia, Foday Sankoh – the former leader of Sierra Leone's brutal Revolutionary United Front, Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso, and recently, the widely ostracized Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. In 1995 Gaddafi expelled an estimated 30,000 Palestinians to punish the Palestine Liberation Organization for engaging in the peace process with Israel.

Libya's support of international terrorism in the 1980s led to confrontation with the United States. The US bombed Libya in 1986 in response to alleged Libyan involvement in a terrorist attack in Germany that killed US soldiers. In 1992, the United Nations imposed sanctions on Libya over its involvement in the downing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. Economic mismanagement and the country's foreign policy dented Gaddafi's popularity.

More recently, Libya has mended fences with the United States and Europe, which covet access to Libya's oil reserves. In 1999 Gaddafi handed over two suspects in the Lockerbie bombing. He admitted Libyan responsibility and agreed a compensation package for the Lockerbie victims in August 2003, paving the way for the UN Security Council to lift sanctions against the country the following month. Gaddafi capped the year by renouncing Libyan programmes to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. US energy companies returned to the Libya in 2005, and Washington re-established diplomatic relations with Tripoli in May 2006.

Widely spread throughout Libyan society, Islamic opposition is neither cohesive nor necessarily part of a wider movement with origins outside Libya itself.

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Current state of minorities and indigenous peoples

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In May 2005 a group of Libyan Berbers filed a complaint with the Working Group on Minorities of the UN Commission on Human Rights, claiming violations of their linguistic and cultural rights. The filing cited Libyan laws that prohibit use of languages other than Arabic, including bans on the use of non-Arab languages in education and the media, and a prohibition on registration of newborns with Berber names. The complaint also cited the banning of the establishment of Berber cultural organizations and physical abuse, arbitrary detention, and even killing of Libyan Berbers who identify publicly with Berber identity, language, and history.

In 2006, Human Rights Watch accused Libya of serious abuses of the rights of migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa. The report detailed abuse in detention, squalid conditions, sexual violence, and the repatriation of 145,000 foreigners between 2003 and 2005. Libya makes no effort to determine whether those being deported to their home countries face dangers there. Human Rights Watch found that concerns about African immigration resulted in European Union and Italian complicity with Libya's handling of migrants and refugees in violation of international law.

Topics: Minorities,