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VI. Conclusion

Libya is subjecting women and girls to arbitrary deprivations of their liberty and a host of other human rights abuses by locking them up indefinitely in social rehabilitation facilities. By detaining women and girls who have transgressed socially-acceptable norms and rape victims whose families have abandoned them, the government is choosing to prioritize chastity, virginity, and a traditional concept of family “honor” over human rights. The exit requirements are in themselves arbitrary and coercive.

The confinement of victims of rape in social rehabilitation facilities is emblematic of the Libyan state’s position towards violence against women—a position of denial of the phenomenon, tacit acceptance of domestic violence, and inadequate laws and services to provide proper protection and remedy to the victims.  The notion persists that, rather than being a crime against the individual woman requiring appropriate judicial redress, rape is a crime against a women’s “honor” that shames her and her family.  The risk that rape victims will themselves be prosecuted is also one of the problematic aspects of the criminalization of all extramarital sexual relations in Libya.

The transfer of women and girls into social rehabilitation facilities is only the beginning of a host of other abuses they will endure. Libyan authorities utterly restrict their freedom of movement and subject them to punitive treatment including solitary confinement for the most trivial of reasons. Women and girls are tested for communicable diseases without their consent and are forced to endure virginity examinations, a form of degrading treatment. Human Rights Watch is concerned that many of the detainees are denied their rights to due process, are not granted the opportunity to challenge the legality of their detention in a court of law, and are denied any form of legal representation.

The abusive nature of social rehabilitation facilities and the egregious violations that occur within them require immediate action. Social rehabilitation centers must not to be the only form of shelter available to women and girls in need of protection in Libya. The Libyan government should establish purely voluntary and non-punitive shelters for those in need of housing or protection from violence. These shelters should not compromise women’s privacy, personal autonomy, and freedom of movement. All women and girls held in them who have not been convicted of a crime according to standards of due process and are not serving a sentence, should be released immediately.


<<previous  |  index  |  next>>February 2006