Humans in Transit: Stories of survival from the deadly Mediterranean migration route

Five months ago we arrived in Sabha in a car with 24 people. Just two of us were women. When we arrived we heard horrible stories about other people who didn’t survive the journey. We called my mother and told her we were in Libya, and she was very happy that we had survived the trip across the desert.

We have been detained now for almost four months. My mother doesn’t know that we are here. Between us detainees we try to exchange telephone numbers, so that when people get out they can call our families and help us to get out as well.

I see people who have paid the guards leaving. When you have paid, they call your name and let you go.

— 18-year-old from Democratic Republic of Congo

Artwork © Souad Kokash/MSF

I was working for a UN immunization program, giving polio drops to children in the mountains near Afghanistan, but people threatened to kill my family because they thought the program was trying to sterilize their children. I decided to leave to stop the threats and flew to Tripoli. I started working as a laborer to support my family back home, but at one point I was kidnapped, and all my money was taken.

When we were in the boat, the Libyan Coast Guard came. Two of them jumped in the boat with guns, took our money and phones, drove us to the limit of Libyan territorial waters and left us there. Then another boat came and took our motor.

Now I want to ask for asylum and hopefully bring my family to join me, as the situation in Pakistan is difficult. 

— 55-year-old from Pakistan

Artwork © Ngadi Smart/MSF

I left Eritrea at 15. There’s no education there and you have to join the army. My uncle in London helped pay for me to make this journey via Sudan.

In Libya I was arrested. In prison they would ask for $500 to stop beating you, but I had no money. Some women are molested and raped. An Eritrean man helped us buy our way out of prison. We were taken to a house where we were given food, then they took us to the boat. I was so afraid at first—there were so many of us—but I got aboard.

My mother thinks I’m still in Sudan. I’m afraid to tell her I made the crossing. Now I must work to pay back my uncle. I will tell my siblings never to make this journey.

— 17-year-old from Eritrea

Artwork © Ngadi Smart/MSF

I was forced to marry. My husband kept raping me and treating me badly so I decided to leave. I traveled with my friend whose husband is in Italy, but she drowned.

Even before we set out the engine was making a strange sound, but they forced us to go. After four hours the rubber boat was full of water, then a big wave turned it over. We were all in the water. Somehow I reached the boat again, even though I can’t swim. Some people turned the boat upright and we got back in. Others were pushed away by the ones inside—they were worried the boat would sink with too many people. Most people died.

We waited for six hours until we were rescued. They threw lifejackets and I held onto a man who could swim. Afterwards I helped identify women who had drowned. 

— 12-year-old from Ivory Coast 

Artwork © Tawab Safi/MSF

I came to Libya on a one-month visa. The trip cost 400,000 Bangladeshi taka [$3,290] and my family is now in debt. I worked in Tripoli but the pay was very bad. Sometimes my employer hit me when I asked for wages.

Several times police raided the houses where we Bangladeshis lived and arrested us all. Then they beat us and hung us by our legs until we called friends to pay the ransom. Once I was kept for two months as I couldn’t arrange the money.

I couldn’t go back to Bangladesh as my family was expecting money, so I decided to go to Europe. I paid my precious 2,000 dinars [$370] to smugglers who locked over 100 of us into a suffocating container that was then driven to the shore, where we were then left waiting. At last the boat came, and after a seven-hour voyage we were rescued.

— 36-year-old from Bangladesh

Artwork © Barly Tshibanda/MSF

My parents moved from Palestine to Syria and that’s where I was born. After high school, I helped my father sell chickens. We weren’t rich but we had an ordinary life. But when the war started, everything changed. Our house was bombed so we moved. The next house was bombed too. We moved into an abandoned building half-gutted by fire.

I decided to go to Lebanon. There were no jobs and the government was hard on us. I managed to get a job milking cows. I worked around the clock but was only paid $5 a day. I was so tired that I took a bus to another town and found a job in a sweet shop. It was a hard life but I managed to save some money. My father’s friend knew someone who could arrange the trip to Europe, via Sudan and Libya, and finally, across the sea. 

— 18-year-old Palestinian from Syria 

Artwork © Barly Tshibanda/MSF

They transferred me to the Ghut Shaal detention center in Tripoli—the worst place I’ve ever been. There were 400 of us sleeping in a room barely big enough for 50. There were no windows and people kept fainting whenever the guards opened the door.

The food was disgusting, and we believed they were adding sleeping pills to it. But the worst part was the detainees who worked with the guards. They used to torture us and tell the guards about anything that happened in the cells, like when we tried digging through the wall with a spoon.

When they said they were transferring the Sudanese I pretended to be one. We escaped from the new detention center and ran for our lives. 

— 16-year-old from Eritrea 

Artwork © Tawab Safi/MSF

I will never get married. I want nothing romantic to do with men because all my experiences have been evil. I lost my virginity traumatically and was raped as a teenager—and that was just the start.

I turned down my university place to study medicine after my sister’s boyfriend promised me that I could earn good money in Libya. When I got there, I was shocked to find he expected me to work as a prostitute. When I refused, he starved me and beat me with leather belts. Eventually I gave in and began to attend to the needs of his many guests. One day I was raped by seven men who came looking for revenge after he shot someone. I was in the hospital for two months. A friend nursed me back to health. After several attempts, I got on a boat to Europe.

— 28-year-old from Nigeria

Artwork © Barly Tshibanda/MSF

I came to Libya eight months ago to work. I paid the middleman 500,000 Bangladeshi taka [$4,113] and still owe another 300,000. I was met at the airport and taken to a storeroom. There, 80 of us were held in complete darkness, with no toilet. They kept beating and kicking us. One man tried to escape—he was shot dead in front of us. I had to ask my family for money. They sent 480,000 taka [$3,949] but I was not released. They had to send more.

After that I worked in a department store—a good employer. But I was kidnapped by the security forces and had to pay again. Then I decided to come to Europe. A Bangladeshi man helped me get on a boat. It took all my remaining money.

My family sold nearly everything to get me to Libya and keep me alive once I was there.

— 17-year-old from Bangladesh

Artwork © Ngadi Smart/MSF

My father died years ago. It was just me and my mother. I want to help her. We are poor. She suggested that I go to Europe. I went to Agadez and crossed into Algeria and then Libya. I walked for two days in the desert with a group of other Blacks. We were kidnapped by an Arab criminal gang. I was very scared because I’d been told that the Libyans are bad.

The Arabs would ask for money and beat you if you did not give them any. I did not have money, so I was beaten. They forced us to work for them without pay. They treated us like slaves. They would tell us to give them our family’s phone number. I did not give them my mother’s number as I did not want to make her worried. Also, she has no money. 

— 17 year-old from Guinea 

Artwork © Barly Tshibanda/MSF

I was held in a cabin with eight other women. At night when there were no guards we went out to find food—a piece of bread in the street or anything.

One night Arabs took us to a house, tied us up and raped us. They beat us too. Even after they untied me I couldn’t walk. One night armed men blindfolded us and took us to a warehouse in Sabratha. The next day they beat us with rubber pipes. Two girls died. Sometimes we went two or three days without food. Eventually we were taken to the sea. We panicked so they beat us again, but then they put us on a boat.

I’m pregnant now but what can I do?

— 25-year-old from Ivory Coast

Artwork © Ngadi Smart/MSF

I fled South Sudan in 2014 after the war started. I lost my parents in the violence. I was registered as a refugee at a camp in Kenya, but I wasn’t offered resettlement.

I went to Sudan but couldn’t get work. I heard there was work in Libya, so I came here with a friend two months ago. We were arrested at a checkpoint.

We were held with little food and no toilet or shower. They beat us and held guns to our heads. They didn’t understand my refugee card or let me explain.

I can’t go back home. But in Libya it’s dangerous—we are always hiding. And I’m worried that they’ll take me away from here, then UNHCR won’t be able to find me.

— 27-year-old from South Sudan 

Artwork © Ngadi Smart/MSF

My father has a fishery business and we are well off. I speak nine languages, I played football professionally, and I wanted to play abroad. I didn’t intend to come to Europe originally. I would prefer to enter Europe legally, as a refugee—I had registered as a refugee with UNHCR [UN Refugee Agency].

I paid $6,000 for the journey. Even so, I was kept in Libya for five months, in a hangar with 2,000 people. The smugglers are mafia. They always find some excuse to keep you—the weather, the authorities. Eventually we left from Sabratha. 

— 29-year-old from Eritrea 

Artwork © Souad Kokash/MSF

My father was pressuring me to marry a man he owed money to, but my mother refused so my father said I had to leave.

I went to Benin City with friends. We met a man who said he’d take us to Europe to work for good wages. But in Libya he took us to a brothel. I refused to work so they starved me and kept beating me every day. Eventually I gave in. At first I bled a lot and needed treatment. They said they would add the cost to what they claimed I owed them.

Once I tried to escape but they brought me back and beat me badly. Several times I was abducted by Arabs who beat me with guns and raped me. Finally I did escape, and an Arab helped me—he drove me to Subratha and paid for me to cross to Europe.

— 18-year-old from Nigeria

Artwork © Souad Kokash/MSF

The guards here give us one plate of rice, put it on the floor and make five people eat from it at the same time. I can’t eat fast, as I have problems with my throat and stomach, so sometimes the others eat all the rice and there’s nothing left for me. Other times the guards start hitting me, because they think I’m slowing things down and they want us to finish the whole plate in just a couple of minutes. 

— 16-year-old from Mali 

Artwork © Souad Kokash/MSF

I left home last October. My parents had died of illness and my sister in an accident. A friend paid for me and my younger brother to travel to Libya. He said it was a good place to work.

We went from Sabha to Tripoli. Once in Libya I realized it was not safe. We would hide and go without food for fear of being kidnapped and sold to prison.

In January I lost my brother when security forces cleared out the Africans from the area where we were living.

I hid for a month at Tajura then went back to Tripoli and got a friend to send me money for a boat to Italy. They search you and take everything—you can keep only the clothes that you are wearing.

I miss my brother. I see other people with their families but I am completely alone now.

— 17-year-old from Gambia

Artwork © Tawab Safi/MSF

I don’t have any parents—the woman who brought me up said they had too many children so they couldn’t care for me. I fled Nigeria because of the fighting. I’m traveling with my friend—we met on the journey.

In Libya I spent two months in a building with no windows, along with 90 others. Arab men used to come at night and beat us. They had guns but no uniforms. They let other men come and take girls.

Two days ago a man took four of us to a house where two men beat us to make us remove our clothes. They broke my tooth. Then they made us lie on the floor and have sex with them.

Afterwards they locked us in a caravan with no food or water. A day later they let two of us go—I don’t know what happened to the others.

— 17 year-old from Eritrea 

Artwork © Barly Tshibanda/MSF

I had taken some bread, and they gave me a serious beating. I fainted because of the beatings, and they put me in the clinic after that. I slept in the clinic that night. We don’t get enough food here, so people fight for it every day. There is not enough food.

[The guards] hit people so they go and sit down. They fire bullets into our cell at night—on the wall, over our head—to scare people and so that we go to sleep. 

The guards treat us like animals. The money they should spend on us isn’t spent on us. There is no water in the toilets, so I can’t brush my teeth in the morning. Today is day 37 here.

I am looking forward to going home to Gambia. I am a sportsman, I run on the beach, and I love to move. 

— 27-year-old from Gambia 

Artwork © Barly Tshibanda/MSF