On Saturday, Libya and Morocco signed a cooperation agreement aimed at enhancing joint work in the field of human rights protection.
This was decided in a meeting that took place in the Moroccan capital, Rabat, between the Head of the National Council for Civil Liberties and Human Rights of Libya, Omar Hijazi, and the President of the Moroccan National Human Rights Council (CNDH), Amina Bouayach.
This agreement aims to lay the foundations for joint action and consultation mechanisms, to promote and protect human rights in both countries.
Under the agreement, both institutions undertake to exchange experiences, collaborate on issues of common interest and work together to identify and initiate joint activities in areas of their respective competencies.
They also agree to carry out certain joint actions in the framework of partnerships with the United Nations (UN) and African Union (AU) human rights mechanisms, as well as with any other similar forum at Arab, continental and international levels. On his part, Hijazi stressed that the meeting aims to take advantage of the Moroccan experience in this field.
He added that the Libya Council for Civil Liberties and Human Rights is working to revitalize the topic of human rights in the country. It is doing this with the support of the House of Representatives (HoR), the Council of Ministers and successive governments. Hijazi said the achievement of this goal “requires drawing on international expertise, which is what we found with our brothers in the Kingdom of Morocco.”
The Libyan authorities have been holding hundreds of Moroccan migrants for months in inhumane conditions of detention without legal justification, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in January.
Hundreds of Moroccan migrants have been detained in several detention centres in the West of the country. This includes the Al-Daraj detention centre near the Ghadames area, and the Ain Zara and Ghout al-Shaal prisons in the western regions of Tripoli which suffer difficult humanitarian conditions. This is especially the case in the Al-Daraj detention centre, where many were infected with the Coronavirus, amid a lack of health care provisions.