Libya: Slow Flood Recovery Failing Displaced Survivors

Libyan authorities are failing to provide adequate compensation and reconstruction support a year after devastating floods wrecked the eastern Libyan city of Derna and left thousands dead or missing, Human Rights Watch said today. Armed groups have yet to face accountability for emergency response failures that prevented people from seeking safety. 

The slow recovery and lack of a national response plan is having a severe effect on the economic rights of survivors, including to housing, health, electricity, and education. Flood survivors said they face hurdles getting equitable compensation and reconstruction support amid a political stalemate, severely limiting the ability of displaced people to return to their homes. In Derna, the hardest hit city, devastation and damage to infrastructure remains widespread, including to homes, water and sanitation networks, electricity grids, hospitals, and schools. Access to financial and government services is limited and thousands of victims remain unidentified or missing.

“Displaced residents from Derna and other eastern Libyan towns, whose lives were upended after the calamity, face burdensome and often impossible hurdles accessing any kind of state support,” said Hanan Salah, associate Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities need to ensure an equitable approach to reconstruction efforts and remedy for residents.”

On September 10, 2023, heavy rainfall caused two dams upstream of Derna to collapse, resulting in devastating flooding and leaving at least 5,923 dead, thousands missing, and more than 40,000 internally displaced, according to the United Nations, and large-scale destruction in eastern Libya. Despite flood warnings up to three days before the storm, officials in Derna issued conflicting evacuation orders and imposed a curfew that effectively trapped people, preventing them from seeking safety. A joint assessment by the World Bank, European Union, and UN found US$1.65 billion in damage and losses mostly in infrastructure.

Human Rights Watch spoke with 16 flood survivors displaced from the eastern cities of Derna and Ajdabiya to the western city of Misrata, who described the impact of shelter in place orders and severe barriers to getting any kind of government support after losing their livelihoods. Most said the only support they received in the immediate aftermath was from private Libyan or foreign charities and local initiatives. Only one person said they received government compensation because they were in Derna when the eastern authorities offered one-time compensation to people who were there. The others said they could not even apply for compensation, as they were not in Derna when the disbursements were made. 

A resident of the Deir al-Wadi area in Derna said that forces affiliated with the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF), the de facto authority in eastern Libya, ordered his family to shelter in place on the day of the flooding. “There is no freedom in Derna,” he said. “The army is involved in everything.” Two of his children were killed in the floods and authorities had yet to find and identify their bodies. “At the beginning, the dead were buried randomly and often in mass graves. Authorities are now excavating those bodies and then they bury them again. I want to know where my children are. Were they buried? Or are they in the sea?”

On July 28, the Derna Criminal Court convicted and sentenced 12 Libyan officials to prison terms of up to 27 years, and fined them, for their role in the collapse of the two dams. It acquitted four others. The 16 officials did not include senior commanders and members of the LAAF, which managed the crisis response and issued and enforced the questionable orders to shelter in place. There has been no accountability for the orders that prevented people from leaving their homes as the storm hit and during the flooding. 

The LAAF and affiliated security apparatuses and militias control eastern and southern Libya, including the area affected by the floods. A civilian affiliated administration is known as the “Libyan Government.” Their rivals, the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity, appointed by consensus through a UN-led process as an interim authority, and affiliated armed groups, control western Libya.

Both rival governments have announced separate reconstruction funds for compensating victims and reconstructing Derna, yet the Central Bank of Libya appears to have withheld funding. Only the eastern administration tied to the LAAF proceeded with the limited one-time compensation payments to some victims. Derna residents said paymentsranged between 20,000-100,000 Libyan Dinar ($4,200-$21,000), depending on the level of damage and destruction to their homes. 

The eastern Libya Development and Reconstruction Fund, controlled by Belqasim Hiftar, the son of the LAAF commander Khalifa Hiftar, also announced multiple reconstruction projects, including new housing units and bridges in Derna. However, the systems for financing the project and selecting the beneficiaries are unclear. 

A displaced Derna resident and father of four children said he had not received any support or compensation from Libyan authorities since he had been forced to leave. Two of his children required specialized care for autism and cancer treatment.

“I didn’t get any compensation, unlike my brothers who got LYD30,000 [$6,000] each from the eastern government,” he said. “They were not able to request my share on my behalf because I was not physically in Derna. All of my belongings are lost, including my papers. I cannot get a passport, or ID or driver’s license or a confirmation of the status of my family, because this all has to be issued in Derna. I don’t even have the means to go back to visit. I had to sell my daughter’s earrings, my wife’s gold, and other belongings just to cover costs.” 

Survivors in Misrata said that they faced barriers getting cash and that Libyan commercial banks required displaced people to return over 1,000 kilometers to Derna to make simple cash withdrawals or transfers, refusing them services in Misrata. Displaced flood survivors said they had to resort to expensive private transfer options to get any access to cash. 

Survivors also said that access to public records, such as house ownership documents, was often difficult because authorities required them to go to the public administration branch in Derna, even if they lacked the means to do so. Some also said they faced barriers to getting replacements for civil status documents, identification cards, and passports that they had lost in the floods. 

They said they also faced barriers accessing education, including schools and universities, day care, and other specialized care centers because they were unable to pay the transportation costs and received no support from the authorities. 

Human Rights Watch has backed a call by Libyan organizations for an independent international investigation into the Derna disaster. The mandate of the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya ended in March 2023 and no international investigative entity is currently in place for Libya. 

Libyan authorities are obligated to realize the rights to health, housing, education, electricity, and water and sanitation, including for those affected by the floods, and should ensure that the relief and reconstruction response respects people’s rights. 

“Only an independent investigation into all aspects of the Derna calamity can shed light into officials’ responsibility for the dam collapse and the key role armed groups played in managing the response that resulted in such a high number of deaths,” Salah said. 

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Human Rights Watch (HRW).