Did NATO Intervention Improve Human Rights in Libya?

Volume 26, Number 3, February 2017

Global politics

Did NATO intervention improve human rights in Libya?

Dan Glazebrook

On 17 February 2011 an uprising began in Libya aiming to unseat the country’s leader Muammar Gaddafi, who had ruled since 1969. At first, the authorities were caught off guard, and within weeks the rebels had taken control of most of the eastern half of the country, along with several towns and cities in the west. But an offensive launched by the Libyan army in early March quickly recaptured most of this territory. By mid-March, the uprising faced total defeat, with the Libyan army preparing to retake Benghazi, the last major holdout of the rebel forces. However, several governments — Britain and France in particular — along with various human rights organisations, claimed that the Libyan army would commit a massacre against the civilians of Benghazi if they retook the city.

On 17 March 2011 the UN Security Council (UNSC) passed Resolution 1973, authorising the creation of a ‘no fly zone’ in Libya (to ground the Libyan airforce), along with the taking of ‘all necessary measures’ to protect civilians in Libya. NATO, the US–European military alliance, began bombing Libyan government forces 2 days later, coordinating their attacks with the rebel forces on the ground. This bombing campaign continued for a further 7 months, by the end of which the Libyan government had been overthrown and its leader Gaddafi captured, tortured and summarily executed.

Libya has lacked a fully functioning government ever since. This was the first time the UNSC had authorised military intervention on humanitarian grounds without the permission of the country's government, and so marked a major development in the history of 'humanitarian intervention'. But was the intervention successful in improving human rights for the Libyan people?

Human rights in Libya in 2010

There is little evidence that the Libyan government was involved in any major human rights violations in the run-up to the 2011 rebellion. The 2010 Amnesty International report, for example, made no reference to any 'grave' or 'serious' human rights violations — such as torture or extrajudicial killing — committed that year, although it did note that ‘Hundreds of cases of enforced disappearance and other serious human rights violations committed in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s remained unresolved’. The picture painted by the report was of a country where grave human rights abuses may well have occurred in the past and not been properly investigated, but were no longer taking place.

Social and economic rights, meanwhile, were highly developed, with housing, education and healthcare all provided free to the population. As a result, the country ranked 53 out of 169 in the UN's 2010 Human Development Index, classified as ‘high human development’, with the highest life expectancy and lowest infant mortality rates on the African continent.

However, civil and political freedoms in Libya were certainly limited, and Amnesty noted that ‘freedom of expression, association and assembly continued to be severely curtailed and the authorities showed little tolerance of dissent.’ The annual 'freedom of the press' index compiled by Freedom House ranked Libya 193rd out of 196 countries in 2010.

Libya in 2011

The main humanitarian argument for the intervention, however, specifically concerned Gaddafi's response to the February 2011 rebellion, during which the Libyan government was accused of massacring peaceful protesters. Yet, many have disputed this narrative. Reports quickly emerged, for example, of the rebels engaging in racist massacres of black-skinned Libyans and migrant workers, challenging the image of a peaceful democratic protest movement. Alan Kuperman of the University of Texas has noted that most of the protests were violent from the start, and those that were peaceful were dealt with peacefully.

In the final analysis, the argument for humanitarian intervention rested not on what had happened in Libya, but on what was supposedly about to happen. David Cameron and other Western leaders claimed that Gaddafi was planning a massacre of civilians in Benghazi. Much was made of Gaddafi's speech on Libyan television as his army approached the city, in which he promised ‘no mercy’ for the rebels, and said they would face death if they continued to resist. However, critics of the intervention, such as Maximilian Forte, have argued that this speech has been wilfully misinterpreted: far from threatening a massacre of civilians, Gaddafi made it clear that only those who had taken up arms against the government would be targeted — and he had even offered amnesty to those who put down their weapons. Furthermore, argues Kuperman, the Libyan army had not committed any massacres against the other half-dozen or so cities retaken from the rebels in the preceding weeks, so there was no reason to believe that a massacre would follow the recapture of Benghazi. Clearly, while it is impossible to know for sure what would have happened had Benghazi fallen, there is no compelling evidence to suggest there would have been a massacre of civilians by government troops.

Human rights in Libya today

Following the destruction of the Libyan government by NATO and various rebel militia groups in October 2011, the country has lacked a fully functioning government, with various armed groups fighting for power ever since, crystallising into full blown civil war from 2014 onwards. As a result, social and economic rights have declined dramatically, with life expectancy falling 3 years between 2011 and 2015 (from 74.5 to 71.6) under the pressure of ongoing war, terrorism and the collapse of public services. The country has dropped from 53rd to 94th place in the UN Human Development Index since 2010.

Indicative of the state of affairs in the 'new Libya' is the fate of the town of Tawergha. This was a black African town of 40,000 people, and seen to be supportive of Gaddafi. But once Gaddafi's government fell, the rebel militias from nearby Misrata threatened to burn the city to the ground unless its inhabitants left. As they began to follow through on their promise the inhabitants fled, and the area is now a ghost town, its former residents scattered across refugee camps throughout the country, where they are still often hunted down and killed. This was a major act of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by forces which NATO’s intervention had brought to power, carried out with the approval of the new government.

Even on the issue of civil and political rights, things seem little improved. While political parties — banned during the Gaddafi era — are now operating, the 2015 Amnesty International report notes that ‘Rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly were severely restricted’. At least seven journalists were executed by militias in 2015 and the country remains far down on the Freedom of the Press index, now ranking 164th out of 199 countries.

Furthermore, torture, which had not been raised as an issue in the 2010 Amnesty International report, was now ‘common in prisons and detention centres throughout Libya’, leading ‘in some cases to death’, with migrants in particular ‘subject to extortion, torture, abduction and sometimes sexual violence by criminal gangs engaged in smuggling and people trafficking’. The report noted that the conflict had injured 20,000 and killed at least 600 civilians in 2015.

If NATO intervened in Libya in order to prevent civilian deaths and improve human rights, it is hard to see how it has been a success.

Links and further reading

‘Intervention in Libya: a humanitarian success?’ — podcast of lectures by Alan Kuperman: https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/intervention-libya-humanitarian-success

‘The war in Libya: race, “humanitarianism”, and the media’ by Maximilian Forte: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/forte200411.html

‘Gaddafi's ghost town after the loyalists retreat’ by Andrew Gilligan: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8754375/Gaddafis-ghost-town-after-the-loyalists-retreat.html

Amnesty International annual report 2010: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/pol10/001/2010/en/

Amnesty International annual report 2016: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2016/02/annual-report-201516/

Dan Glazebrook is Head of Government and Politics at Oxford Spires Academy