The 40-page report, “A Threat to Society? Arbitrary
Detention of Women and Girls for ‘Social Rehabilitation,’” documents
numerous and serious human rights abuses that women and girls suffer in these
facilities. These include violations of their rights to liberty, freedom of
movement, personal dignity, privacy and due process.
Libyan
authorities are holding many women and girls in these facilities who have
committed no crime, or who have completed a sentence. Some are there for no
reason other than that they were raped, and are now ostracized for staining
their families’ “honor.” Officials transferred the majority of these women and
girls to these facilities against their will, while those who came voluntarily
did so because no genuine shelters for victims of violence exist in Libya.
“These facilities are far more punitive than protective,”
said Farida Deif, Middle East and North Africa researcher for the Women’s Rights
Division of Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “How can they be called
shelters when most of the women and girls we interviewed told us they would
escape if they could?”
“Social rehabilitation” facilities
have a distinctly prison-like character. The women and girls sleep in locked
quarters and are not allowed to leave the gates of the compound. The custodians
sometimes subject them to long periods of solitary confinement, occasionally in
handcuffs, for trivial reasons like “talking back.” They are tested for
communicable diseases without their consent upon entry, and most are forced to
endure invasive virginity examinations. Some residents are as young as 16, but
authorities provide no education, except weekly religious instruction.
These women and girls have no opportunity to contest their
confinement in a court of law, and typically have no legal representation. The
exit requirements of “social rehabilitation” facilities are in themselves
arbitrary and coercive. There is no way out unless a male relative takes custody
of the woman or girl or she consents to marriage, often to a stranger who comes
to the facility looking for a wife.
During meetings with
Human Rights Watch in late January, the Libyan government promised to look into
the abuses documented in the report. Aisha al-Qadhafi, daughter of Libyan leader
Mu`ammar al-Qadhafi, also promised to investigate the matter. She presides over
Wa’tassimu, a charity the government has charged with overseeing Tripoli’s
“social rehabilitation” facilities. In late February, the managing director of
the charity informed Human Rights Watch that the government just established a
specialized council to study the conditions in all of Libya’s “social
rehabilitation” facilities including examining the physical and psychological
well-being of the women and children detained. It remains unclear who will be on
the council and how it will function.
Human Rights Watch
welcomes the establishment of the new council and calls on the council to
investigate conditions in the centers first-hand and objectively document
violations of Libyan law as a first step. Ultimately, the Libyan government
should release all women and girls not serving criminal sentences who are
nevertheless confined in these facilities and establish purely voluntary
shelters for women and girls who are at risk of violence.
“Libya cannot use protection as an excuse to lock up women,”
said Deif. “Women and girls who need protection from violence deserve genuine
shelters, not punitive detention.”
Select testimonies from
Libyan women held in the “social rehabilitation” homes featured in the report:
It is as if we’re criminals even though we didn’t do
anything wrong.
— A woman held at the Social Welfare Home for Women in
Tajoura, Tripoli, May 4.
A man raped me on the street on
August 8, 2004... I went directly to the center in Tarhouna, because my brother
would kill me if he found out. I went directly from the center to the social
welfare home. The prosecutor called my parents. He told them my story. They
visit me but they won’t officially receive me.
— A woman held at the
Social Welfare Home for Women in Tajoura, Tripoli, May 4.
My
mother died in a car crash when I was two. My father married a Moroccan woman.
We didn’t understand each other. We had lots of problems. She’d hit and insult
us. Eventually my father kicked me out. He gave me a ticket to visit my
relatives. I worked in a restaurant. I made clean money. I didn’t smoke or take
drugs. A year later, my father came to pick me up because people were talking.
The prosecutor told me that I could either come here or go home with my father.
— A woman held at the Social Welfare Home for Women in Tajoura,
Tripoli, May 4.