https://arab.news/pwy5e
Libya’s woes are often described in terms of armed factions, oil, kleptocracy, and the collapse of governance. Yet one of the country’s deepest fractures is not the lost barrels of crude or warring brigades. It is measured in the bodies of women. Libya has, in effect, waged a quiet but devastating war on women, characterized by unchecked killings, the normalization of abuse, and institutions hollowed out to the point where protection is more fiction than function.
To understand why women in the country bear the brunt of the slow-motion collapse of the state, one must begin with an understanding of the basic structure of Libyan governance. Or, more accurately, its absence.
Two rival governments, both of which claim legitimacy while neither offers any real security, have created a vacuum in which affiliated armed groups rule by force rather than law. With militias embedded within ministries, the “police” compromised, and the courts incapable of enforcing rulings, impunity is woven into the fabric of everyday life.
It is within this context that femicide and gender-based violence have flourished. The data, though incomplete, points to a chronic and escalating crisis. Within a week of a recent UN campaign on violence against women there were three high-profile murders in Libya: a social media influencer shot in her car, a doctor killed by relatives, and the body of an unidentified woman dumped outside Tripoli.
