Rania Hadjer
Denied citizenship, civic rights and access to services, Libyan Tuareg face a growing marginalisation that has become a factor of regional instability.
“We have always been on the margins of the state, but we have never been outside our homeland.”
Abdulbaqi Hamdi, a Tuareg in his early 20s, sums up in a single sentence the paradox that defines his life. Like thousands of others in the southwestern Libyan region of Fezzan, he was born in Libya and grew up there without ever obtaining official recognition from the state.
“We have tried, like our parents and grandparents before us, every possible avenue to obtain an identity card or a passport. The procedures were an endless labyrinth,” Hamdi told Middle East Eye.
“Every attempt ends in refusal or indefinite postponement, under the pretext of a ‘security file review’ or ‘insufficient evidence’,” he added.
For Tuareg in Libya, the absence of citizenship is not an administrative accident, but the result of a long history of unfulfilled promises, political marginalisation and institutional collapse, exacerbated since the 2011 uprising that toppled long-term autocrat Muammar Gaddafi.
An indigenous Amazigh people of North Africa, traditionally nomadic and spread across five states – Libya, Mali, Niger, Algeria and Burkina Faso – the Tuareg have been marginalised by policies that view them as difficult to control.
From the 1960s and 1970s onwards, many Tuareg families from Mali and Niger settled in southern Libya, fleeing Sahelian droughts and armed rebellions. During Gaddafi’s reign, their presence was tolerated, and at times even encouraged.
“Many were recruited into the army or paramilitary camps, with the promise of eventual naturalisation. But that promise was never fulfilled,” Mohamed, a former tour guide who became a community mediator for NGOs in the Fezzan and is now a refugee in France, told MEE, using a different name for security reasons.
“Gaddafi deliberately maintained this ambiguity to keep these populations under control, through a form of administrative blackmail,” he added.
Meanwhile, several generations were born on Libyan soil without passports, national ID numbers and, therefore, civic rights.
The fall of Gaddafi in 2011 marked a brutal turning point. The Tuareg of the Fezzan were quickly suspected of loyalty to the former administration, due to the involvement of some of them in Gaddafi’s army.
“They paid twice,” Mohamed said. “First by serving the state in order to survive, and then by being stigmatised after its fall.”
Since 2014, Libya has been divided between two rival administrations competing for legitimacy and control of the territory: the UN-recognised Government of National Unity (GNU), based in Tripoli, and a parallel government backed by eastern commander Khalifa Haftar, based in Benghazi.
This fragmentation has durably weakened governance in the south of the country, where the state remains largely absent. Most Tuareg-inhabited areas in the southwest – including Ghat, Ubari, Sebha and Murzuq – are under the control of Haftar’s forces.
In the cities of Sabha and Ubari, entire neighbourhoods – such as Talaqine or al-Tayouri – remain excluded from public services.
Non-existent roads, lack of sanitation networks, near-absence of health facilities: these areas function like forgotten enclaves.
“People live trapped in an area they no longer dare to leave. They can be arrested at any moment and treated as illegal migrants, even though they were born here,” Mohamed said, in a context where migrant people in Libya face arbitrary detention, violence and torture.
Administrative limbo
According to Majdi Bouhanna, human rights activist and rapporteur at the Supreme Social Council of Libya’s Tuareg, the community’s main representative body, around 14,000 families were affected at the time of the last official census in 2005. The figure would now reach between 16,000 and 17,000 families.
These families appear in so-called “provisional” civil registries, inherited from older legislation and supposedly designed to allow for later regularisation – which never took place.
“Legally, the file is complete,” Bouhanna said. “The necessary decisions have been taken; appeal deadlines have passed.”
The deadlock stems from an accumulation of past administrative decisions that were never fully implemented. Under Gaddafi, a commission was tasked with identifying and registering Tuareg families who lacked documentation, and formally validated their files.
Subsequent regularisation procedures were slowed by administrative dysfunctions, without ever being legally overturned.
According to Bouhanna, successive committees later confirmed the validity of these files, and the decisions to transfer them to the permanent civil registry have exceeded the appeal deadlines, making them legally final.
Contrary to a widespread belief in Libya’s public debate, this deadlock does not concern only families from neighbouring countries.
“The problem affects all Tuareg, including indigenous ones,” Bouhanna said. “The Saharan way of life, cross-border movement and the absence of clear civil registration procedures affect all communities, regardless of origin.”
He explained that rural exodus, forced sedentarisation and the expansion of modern administration transformed this historical ambiguity into a major legal problem.
“It was only when civil registration became essential to work, study or access healthcare that these families fell into administrative illegality,” Bouhanna said.
In 2014, Law No. 8 on the national identification number made the Tuareg’s situation even more critical and prone to discrimination. Without this number, it is impossible to obtain a passport, vote, own land or access social assistance. A temporary administrative number exists, but it grants very limited rights.
“Even the pilgrimage to Mecca becomes impossible for some, due to the lack of a passport,” Bouhanna said.
“And recently, discriminatory practices have multiplied: refusals to register marriages, open bank accounts, obtain SIM cards or even issue death certificates.”
Mohamed notes that the issue is not limited to the Tuareg community, but also affects the Tebu, nomadic people of the central Sahara.
He recalls that during the Chad-Libya conflict over the Aouzou Strip between 1978 and 1987, and following the International Court of Justice ruling that returned the territory to Chad, Gaddafi instructed the Tebu to “return” to Chad.
“But many of them were born in Libya and have lived there all their lives. They have nothing in Chad. To this day, they are denied Libyan citizenship,” he said, adding that many Tuareg and Tebu have been forced to use false papers in order to travel, receive medical care or study.
‘We live like ghosts’
For the families concerned, the consequences are concrete and daily.
In education, children can enrol in school, but are denied official diplomas. In healthcare, access to medical treatment is subject to numerous complications and administrative formalities that make it difficult for them to obtain the few services to which they are entitled.
“The difficulties we face every day form a wall of frustration. I cannot open a bank account, officially own land, or travel. We live like ghosts,” Hamdi said.
This exclusion fuels a deep sense of identity fracture. “I am Libyan by blood, by history, by attachment to this land. But I am not Libyan in the eyes of the law,” he added.
In Ubari, Khadidja Andidi, a 40-year-old architect and humanitarian activist, also lacks a national ID number. In 2016, following a deadly conflict between Tuareg and Tebu, she founded the volunteer centre Noor al-Ilm.
“The 2014-2015 war was a wake-up call because we understood it was a deliberate manipulation: divide and rule,” she told MEE.
Between 2014 and 2015, Ubari became the scene of an inter-tribal war driven by rivalries over territorial control, smuggling routes and local resources. The conflict, which resulted in hundreds of deaths and displaced thousands of civilians, was largely fuelled by external interference, shifting alliances with armed groups and attempts at political manipulation.
“This convinced me that we had to defend our rights and work for social peace,” Andidi added.
Her centre provides basic healthcare, training for women and youth, and emergency assistance, but operates entirely outside official channels.
“I cannot even legally register my association because I do not have a national number. It is total absurdity. We are not asking for privileges, only equality. To be seen, heard, and to live with dignity on our own land,” she said.
Andidi believes Tuareg are deliberately marginalised due to a persistent perception in the collective imagination that “if these communities were granted legitimate citizenship status, they would regain a form of power and might rebel”.
Bouhanna rejects security-based accusations levelled against his community.
“During several recent meetings, the head of the GNU confirmed to us that the final decision still lies with the security services. Some of these authorities invoke national security and border control concerns in the east and west to justify their position, but these arguments are unfounded,” he told MEE.
“The Tuareg are an integral part of Libya. They have protected its borders and defended the country at every stage of its history. The accusations levelled against them therefore have no basis,” he said.
Fueling insecurity
In a region where the Libyan state has never reasserted control since 2011, this exclusion goes far beyond the realm of human rights.
In a 2018 report, the UN refugee agency highlighted how the denial of nationality fuels chronic marginalisation and acts as an aggravating factor in conflict, forced displacement and long-term instability.
The Fezzan is criss-crossed by migration routes, smuggling corridors and trans-Saharan trafficking networks, where local militias, armed groups and criminal organisations operate. The marginalisation of thousands of Tuareg creates a major security vulnerability.
Deprived of education, formal employment and institutional protection, many young Tuareg turn to the informal economy or armed structures, often recruited as fighters or auxiliaries for militias.
“By excluding them, the state is reproducing exactly the Gaddafi-era model: using these populations as a proxy force, without ever granting them rights,” Mohamed said.
“When an entire generation is deprived of education, work and recognition, the conditions for its instrumentalisation are created,” he added.
For Bouhanna, there is an urgent need to act. “We are told that it is not the right time, that the political situation is too fragile,” he said, citing Libyan officials. “But postponing this issue only makes it worse.”
According to Mohamed, anger among the Tuareg is mounting, with a recent surge in calls for mobilisation on social media. “There is a risk of imminent explosion,” he said.
“Taken together, the Tuareg and Tebu cases have become a bureaucratic nightmare for the country. If these populations are not regularised, the situation could explode at any moment, in a country that is already extremely fragile,” he added.
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