Women, Workers, and Dis/Empowerment in Saudi Arabia

Indian migrant worker Pokkoya Shamnad (right) was forcefully trafficked by his employer in 2013 from Kuwait into Saudi Arabia. Photo by Sebastian Castelier via Shutterstock. Indian migrant worker Pokkoya Shamnad (right) was forcefully trafficked by his employer in 2013 from Kuwait into Saudi Arabia. Photo by Sebastian Castelier via Shutterstock.

Women, Workers, and Dis/Empowerment in Saudi Arabia

By : Nora Jaber

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has implemented major changes to its gender and labor policies, rearticulating the role of Saudi women and migrant workers in the economy. Women’s empowerment is at the heart of the Saudi state’s post-Vision 2030 narrative, the government’s strategic blueprint for social and economic development, designed to diversify the economy and reduce dependence on oil. The Vision’s success depends on increasing the number of Saudi citizens in the workforce and reducing reliance on migrant workers in various sectors. Because of this move toward “Saudization”, there has been a significant focus on redefining the role of Saudi women and realizing their untapped economic potential. Gone are the days when Saudi women were relegated to the domestic sphere, constructed as mothers and caretakers of the home and the nation. The ideal Saudi woman is now an active participant in the country’s economy.

The neoliberal state feminism that underpins Vision 2030 equates women’s empowerment with their potential as successful economic actors. The “free” Saudi woman is one who accumulates rights and opportunities that enable her to flourish within a capitalist market economy. Saudi women are now promised that, with the right level of ambition and the support of the state, they can be and do anything—as long as it bolsters the state’s image as a hub of progressive modernity and contributes to its economic growth. The state has invested heavily in promoting the achievements of particular Saudi women through advertising, making their leadership and participation in certain industries including science, technology, sports, and the arts hyper visible. The fact that many working Saudi women are employed in less lucrative jobs and earning relatively low wages is overshadowed.

To facilitate women’s participation in the workforce, the Saudi state has implemented various measures and legal reforms. It has opened many new job sectors for women including in the service industry, the legal sector, and the military. It also enacted labor law reforms, introducing protection from employment discrimination and other measures to make the private sector more attractive to Saudi citizens. Additionally, the state undertook reforms to improve women’s rights more broadly. These include granting women the right to drive, implementing anti-harassment laws, and reducing the scope of the Male Guardianship System (MGS), a framework of laws and policies that subject women to the control and authority of male relatives, to grant women more legal autonomy and independence. Together, these measures have allowed women to overcome major barriers that hindered their economic participation.

For this, the Saudi state has been globally celebrated, including by international institutions. And this is no surprise – the gender reforms announced by the state, and formulated with the help of consultancy firms, largely align with the United Nation’s women’s empowerment agenda, which adopts a liberal model of gender equality that works to include ambitious women within the existing capitalist order, leaving its structural inequalities intact. Importantly, although the state has made a major effort to portray these measures as purely top-down initiatives, human rights groups, international organisations, and the media have also acknowledged the role that Saudi women themselves have played in advocating for these changes over decades, particularly their campaigns against the ban on driving and the MGS.

An uncritical celebration of Saudi Arabia’s women empowerment agenda overlooks how rights gains for some Saudi women, and their increased inclusion in the workforce, may produce and entrench other forms of marginalization and exclusion, which particularly affect migrant workers.

What is obvious from these celebratory accounts is that gender reforms in Saudi Arabia are almost always discussed only in relation to Saudi women, rendering their implications for non-citizens invisible. While improving the rights and status of Saudi women is certainly necessary, the empowerment of Saudi women as visible economic actors is linked to the reconfiguration of the country’s labor regime and has exclusionary effects on the migrant working class, in particular. Moreover, the limited accounts of Saudi women’s activism do not address how Saudi women themselves continue to participate in the exploitation of migrant workers, particularly through the Kafala framework, a set of laws and policies that regulates the ability of non-citizens to work and reside in the country.

An uncritical celebration of Saudi Arabia’s women empowerment agenda overlooks how rights gains for some Saudi women, and their increased inclusion in the workforce, may produce and entrench other forms of marginalization and exclusion, which particularly affect migrant workers. It ignores the limits of adopting gender reform policies that do not extend protections to all women and workers and fails to account for the impact they might have on a global scale, especially in the global south. This calls for a broader reflection on what emancipatory possibilities are foreclosed by liberal feminist justice frameworks that seek autonomy and equality for some, within unequal structures, rather than more meaningful forms of transnational solidarity that work to dismantle those structures.

State Feminism and Its Discontents


The state’s promotion of a liberal discourse of gender equality draws on a colonial Orientalist logic that presents the Arab state as the primary agent for progress and development, whilst constructing “society” as a homogenous block that remains traditional (read backward) and resistant to progressive change. To consolidate this state-society distinction, state officials have tried to portray governmental reforms, particularly around women’s rights, as entirely top-down initiatives bestowed upon society for its own benefit. For example, in 2018, the government invested heavily (£1m) in an international marketing campaign which included large posters displayed around London containing the hashtag #ANewSaudiArabia and the words “He [the Crown Prince] is bringing change to Saudi Arabia.” It also adopted repressive measures to further conceal the role that civil society actors and women’s rights activists had played in demanding these reforms, and to deter them from demanding more. Upon lifting the ban on driving and reducing the scope of the MGS, for example, the government targeted women who had been involved in campaigns challenging those restrictions for decades prior. To this day, some of the women and men who had been advocating for change from below remain imprisoned or under travel bans.

The idea of Saudi women as passive victims must be and has been challenged, but this is not enough. It is necessary to go further and reflect on how Saudi women have bought into state feminism and contributed to the reproduction of unequal social relations. In other work, I have analysed different modes of Saudi women’s activism to show how, like other Gulf feminisms discussed by Kareem (2016), it has largely followed a liberal model of feminism that remains constrained within, and reproduces, the bounds set by the state. Saudi feminism, too, has advocated mainly for the “Woman citizen,” “searching for an ‘equality’ that includes only her [the Saudi woman].” In campaigning for rights, autonomy, and economic independence, Saudi women have appealed to the state and its carceral impulse as the ultimate protector from “social” harms and violence. They have invoked a rights-based discourse that predicates access to rights upon citizenship, reproducing citizen/non-citizen hierarchies, through which unequal class relations are deeply constituted in the Gulf.

Saudi women’s rights activists have also conflated the interests of a narrow group of relatively privileged women with a singular category of “Saudi woman.” In their petitions for reform, for example, I have shown how, in claiming rights on behalf of the ‘Saudi woman” who seeks autonomy, independence, and  economic success, they have sought to improve the lives of elite and middle class Saudi women at the expense of working-class people and migrant workers in particular. Several petitions relied on racialized tropes about migrant others, constructing male domestic workers as sexual predators from whom Saudi women required state protection. In addition to reproducing notions of the racialized other as irredeemably violent and criminal, and of Saudi women as disempowered victims in need of saving, they entirely overlooked the harms migrants, both women and men, are subjected to on an individual and structural basis, including at the hands of Saudi women. For example, what is notably absent from Saudi women’s campaigns to enter the workforce is a recognition of the domestic care gap that may grow as more Saudi women enter the workforce, and be filled, in many instances, by working-class migrant women whose lives and bodies are pervasively constrained by the Kafala system and its intertwined structure of labor exploitation and immigration control. That the empowerment of some women depends on the exploitation of others is overlooked.

A Changing Labor Landscape


One of the main goals of Vision 2030 is to increase the number of Saudi citizens, including women, in the workforce. While Saudi Arabia will continue to rely on migrant workers in particular industries, such as construction, this is an important shift because like other Gulf states, Saudi Arabia has heavily relied on foreign labor following its discovery of oil in the 1930s. The 1950s and 1960s saw the Gulf states shaken by strikes led by oil workers who demanded an end to the exploitative work and living conditions in the work camps of British and US oil companies. Saudi Arabia, like other Gulf monarchies, responded to these strikes with severe political repression as well as by instituting what Hanieh (125) describes as “a distinctive form of labour relations as a means of ensuring subordination,” widely known today as the Kafala system.

The Kafala system is not unique to Saudi Arabia and is not conceptually different from other immigration policies around the world. Broadly, it exists as a racialized labor regime grounded in the unequal global distribution of resources that has effectively transformed parts of the global south into cheap labor reserves. However, its regulations and entanglements with specific racialized and gendered particularities in different contexts shape its contours in Saudi Arabia. The state’s formalization of a tiered labor regime guarantees a division between Saudi and non-Saudi workers, giving the former better working conditions and benefits. This consolidated Saudi Arabia’s reliance on temporary migrant labor, which, in 2013, constituted around 89% of the private sector workforce.

In effect, the Kafala system has created a cheap, deportable, and highly precarious and exploitable migrant working class. It ties the worker’s visa and legal residence in Saudi Arabia to a particular Saudi sponsor for a limited duration, giving Saudi citizens and companies excessive control over the migrant working class. Workers are recruited through private agencies at high fees and are often also made to pay for their own visas. Once they arrive in the country, the nature of their work is often different and lower paid than promised. In many cases, their passports are also confiscated, making their ability to change work or leave the country nearly impossible. While Saudi Arabia announced that it has eased restrictions on migrant workers, including granting them the ability to switch jobs and to travel without “exit authorisations,” the structure of the system remains intact.

The Kafala system, which works through a combination of high immigration control and low labour protection, was intended to ensure the compliance of migrant workers and quell the possibility of unionizing and other forms of dissent, as they could be easily deported upon any minor violation of their contract. The nature of the system and the stark power imbalance it entrenches between Saudi citizens and migrant workers has led to high levels of exploitation and abuse of various forms, particularly of domestic workers, especially women, who are very isolated, making them an easier target that is more difficult to detect. This is also true of undocumented workers who may have either escaped exploitative or abusive working conditions or who remain for other reasons after the end of their contract and lawful residence. In October 2023, the state passed a new law (in force from September 2024) to improve protections offered to domestic workers, such as prohibiting the confiscation of passports and establishing maximum working hours. However, monitoring and enforcement mechanisms appear weak, which has raised doubts about its effective implementation.

Since its inception, the Kafala system has allowed for a visible division in the categories of work that different groups occupied. Saudi citizens (mostly men) worked in the public sector while migrant workers, many of whom are from global South countries that had been severely impoverished through colonial rule and by post-1970s neoliberal policies, were ultimately pushed into the private sector. Therein, they were given little workplace protections, no real restriction on working hours, and no minimum wage, making it highly unattractive to most Saudi citizens. Saudi women, on the other hand, were largely relegated to the home, tasked with domestic social reproduction duties, with the help of female domestic workers for those who could afford it. All of this was facilitated by oil wealth, which allowed the state to subsidize goods and services, making it possible for many Saudi families to live more comfortably on one income. In recent years, the declared move to reduce reliance on oil appears to have made this political economic model untenable, leading the state to shift its accumulation strategy and attract more Saudi citizens to work in the private sector.

To do so, the government has made several changes. It sought to make the private sector more attractive by pushing businesses to increase wages and by enforcing new labor standards. It also revived King Abdallah’s Nitaqaat program, initially announced in 2011 and designed to deliver “Saudization” by incentivizing private companies to hire more Saudis and penalizing those with low rates of Saudi workers. Finally, the state turned to Saudi women, a significant labor power reserve. This has led to a reduction in Saudi women’s unemployment rates. Between 2017 and 2023, women’s labor participation rose from 20.2-34.5 percent, a much-celebrated achievement of Vision 2030.

Based on preliminary qualitative research I have done, including questionnaires and informal interviews, there is an emerging link between increasing the number of working Saudi women and its effects on the lives and livelihoods of migrant workers and their communities. Although more research, including quantitative, is needed to offer a more comprehensive analysis, it appears that several of the jobs Saudi women are now working in, particularly customer-facing roles, were previously largely occupied by male migrant workers. One important reason for the previous lack of Saudi women in these roles is, as Le Renard (2013) shows, that the previous rules around gender segregation in public spaces excluded Saudi women from most jobs where they would interact with men. As Saudi women enter mixed-gender work environments, they compete with men for the same jobs. In some industries that were previously largely occupied by male migrant workers, such as retail and hospitality, this has led to Saudi women replacing them.

Given the structural constraints of the Kafala system, the unemployment of migrant workers may have far reaching effects, including deportation. Many migrant workers have lived in Saudi Arabia for decades and would have to re-build entire lives and communities in “home” countries that they may no longer have links to. Children of migrant workers who were born in Saudi Arabia may never have had a connection to those places at all. Moreover, this may further impoverish communities in their home countries who rely on remittance flows. Some may need to stay illegally, in constant hiding from state authority, losing access to healthcare and other protections or services, while risking deportation, detention, and being forced to pay fines and fees. This would push them into an ever-growing informal work sector, where labor is even cheaper, and where exploitation and abuse are heightened.

Beyond Dis/Empowerment


Celebratory accounts of Saudi women’s empowerment have portrayed the changes as overwhelmingly positive. The state has equated women’s empowerment through economic independence with the overall prosperity of the nation. Women’s rights activists have reinforced this neoliberal narrative in their own campaigns for reform. In these accounts, the nation becomes a place made by and for citizens who bear the responsibility for their own flourishing and for that of the nation. The state’s role becomes a remover of obstacles to economic success under capitalism. The overrepresentation of migrant workers in certain industries and societal patriarchal control become barriers to be taken down by the state’s ever-growing carceral arm. In these accounts, the costs of liberal gender equality agendas, for non-citizens and for working class communities, are effaced. This raises serious questions about the limits of women’s empowerment, who it can serve, and who it harms. What Saudi women have achieved through increased access to the workforce is not liberation. Rather, they have been allowed to participate more visibly in a system that is predicated on gendered, racialised, and class-based oppression and exploitation.

While Vision 2030 is leading to a reconfiguration of the role of Saudi women and migrant workers in the workforce, that Saudi women play an important role in the exploitation of migrant workers is not new and has always been built into the Kafala system. The women’s empowerment narrative only presents Saudi women as victims in need of saving or empowerment by the state, obfuscating how Saudi women themselves have participated in the exploitation of others. This highlights the importance of interrogating liberal gender reforms, which only benefit a small portion of Saudi women rather than transform the social relations that subordinate women and workers to different degrees.

Despite its claims to benefit the nation, women’s empowerment as it is promoted by the state and celebrated globally, will continue to benefit only a portion of privileged Saudi women who align with the state’s Vision, while reproducing the marginalization, exploitation, and oppression of migrant workers. Saudi women need to move beyond liberal feminism’s model of seeking more visibility and access within neoliberal state and private structures. This means that rather than limiting campaigns to “women’s rights,” they must organize for fair and equal working conditions for all, regardless of nationality, and against the institution of citizenship through which class is so heavily constituted in Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf.

Fair and equal treatment of migrant workers is a feminist issue. There is a lesson in this for all who seek liberation rather than selective empowerment: to think more expansively about forging local and transnational solidarities that interrogate and work to dismantle the unequal social relations through which the Kafala system and other forms of exploitation are sustained.

[Thank you to the editors at Jadaliyya for their time and feedback. A special thanks to Francesco Amoruso, Mira Al-Hussein, Robert Knox, Adam Hanieh, and Jamal Abu-Eisheh for comments on early drafts. Thanks also to Idil Akinci-Perez for creating a space for me to think through this with brilliant women scholars on/of the Gulf.]

Beyond Migration: Assessing Libya's Smuggling Sector

Over the past years, Libya has hit the front pages of international media outlets with stories of migration, terrorism, and political instability. The ouster of Gaddafi and the call for the first elections in fifty years have given hope to all those who wished for a new era. A decade later, the country is the battleground of a civil war whose outcome is still difficult to forecast. With a broken political system, Libya has fallen into a quagmire made of violence and illegality. Exploiting this instability, transnational criminal networks have transformed the country into a hub for several illegal flows, impacting directly the rest of North Africa and various countries in the Mediterranean basin. Aside from migrant smuggling, a subject that has monopolized European policymaking in the region, these emergent transnational networks have received little attention from international political stakeholders. This essay, while not trying to be exhaustive, aims at introducing the reader to the topic and at shedding light on the complexity of the Libyan patchwork.

New Smuggling Dynamics


The evolution of Libya’s smuggling dynamics has been significantly influenced by the fall of the Gaddafi regime and the consequent collapse of the security sector. Already characterized by weak institutions, the Libyan state crumbled following the NATO intervention in 2011. Originally intended as a no-fly zone operation, the intervention ultimately engaged in regime change. With the death of Gaddafi, the newly established transitional government found itself incapable of controlling the entire territory of the state. Divided along geographic, political, and communal lines, Libya became the fertile ground for the expansion of armed groups, which since then have become key political stakeholders. The fragility of the constitutional process and the enduring fragmentation eventually led to the outbreak of a second civil war in 2014. Although the warring factions have recently agreed to a ceasefire, the resolution of the political deadlock is not necessarily going to solve Libya’s longstanding socioeconomic issues. A decade of crisis has severely damaged the national economy, contributing to the flourishment of a multilayered smuggling sector.

In the Gaddafi era, smuggling involved mainly subsidized goods such as fuel and flour that could easily be sold by peripheral communities in neighboring countries. In underdeveloped areas like the Fezzan, this illicit economy was tolerated by the regime because it created employment, reducing the risks of active political opposition. Other illegal flows were normally organized by families or tribes close to Gaddafi, and as such were directly under the control of the regime.[1] With the fall of Gaddafi, this form of “centralized” smuggling has ended, and since then, the illicit sector of the Libyan economy has grown considerably. Besides the ongoing contraband of subsidized goods, the smuggling of weapons and drugs has reached remarkable dimensions in the last decade. The reasons behind the expansion of these illicit trades are diverse. In the months after the 2011 civil war, the growth of arms smuggling was mainly dependent upon the fact that militias had seized control of national stockpiles. Weapons started to circulate uncontrolled within Libya and towards its neighbors, fueling armed insecurity in northern Mali, Niger, and Tunisia. However, these weapons often arrived far from Libya. For example, through eastern Egypt, rifles and man-portable missiles reached the Sinai and Gaza, while until 2014, light weapons were smuggled to the Syrian opposition.[2] As the conflict raged newly in Libya, the demand for light arms and ammunition rose steadily. In the past years, it seems that this rising demand has been only partially met by the existing supply.[3] Contrary to the arms trade, the growth of narcotics smuggling is more related to the regional dimensions of the phenomenon. Until the fall of the regime, Libya represented a transit point for small flows of drugs, mainly cannabis, in route to Europe and Egypt. Since 2011, drug trafficking dynamics have evolved radically, seeing the expansion of certain flows, the creation of different routes, and the involvement of new actors.[4] In the first years after the uprising, Libya became a transit point for a new flow of cocaine which reached the coast from the country's southwest. Transported in large quantities by heavily guarded convoys or in small quantities by migrants on their way to Libya, this flow reached large dimensions until the insecurity in Mali and Niger made the route too dangerous for smuggling.[5] Besides cannabis and cocaine, Libya has experienced a small revival of heroin and a significant expansion of smuggled pharmaceutical medicines. In the past few years, prescription painkillers such as Tramadol and Clonazepam have flooded the Libyan drug market and are now purchased regularly by a large segment of society, from middle-class youth in coastal towns to militiamen fighting on the front.[6] Often overlapping with other illegal flows, drug trafficking still constitutes an essential part of Libya's illicit economy.

The injection of arms in the Libyan political arena has pushed traffickers to arm themselves, making this activity riskier and driving some of the old actors out of business.

Compared to the Gaddafi era, smuggling in post-revolutionary Libya has been characterized by fierce competition over routes. The injection of arms in the Libyan political arena has pushed traffickers to arm themselves, making this activity riskier and driving some of the old actors out of business. Moreover, the uncontrolled circulation of weapons has caused the expansion of a particular market for private security, which has become pivotal for the survival of independent smugglers in the business.[7] These factors, along with the political fragmentation, have provided armed groups with the perfect environment for engaging in the smuggling business. For these militias, smuggling represents a way to make a profit out of the military control of stretches of territory, maintaining the local popularity which is often at the base of their power. Militias gain an income by directly controlling certain flows, or by imposing taxes on the commodities passing through their territories. Their involvement in smuggling has facilitated the development of more complex transnational networks but has also contributed to an increase in street violence. Already in 2013, the UN Panel of Experts on Libya underlined that control over trafficking routes had become necessary for the survival of armed groups.[8] Since then, the control over smuggling flows has produced localized conflicts all over the country, often exacerbating pre-existing political rivalries. State attempts to clamp down the phenomenon have produced a particular dynamic for which certain armed groups previously involved in illegal activities have started to collaborate in anti-smuggling operations to gain political legitimacy.[9] This volatility is likely to remain a challenge for any future Libyan government and the international community.

The Two-Way Route to Europe


In July 2018, an inspection of the Italian corvette “Caprera” by the port authorities in Brindisi revealed the presence of some 700,000 cigarettes and several boxes of Cialis on board, purchased by sailors in Libya and intended to be sold illegally in Italy. Stationed in Tripoli for several months, the crew of this warship was part of the force deployed by the Italian government in western Libya to train the GNA's coastguard and prevent the sailing of migrants to Europe. Envisioning the potential profit of this business, the sailors exploited their local contacts to purchase the cigarettes and the medicines, allegedly using the contingency fund of their unit to pay the traders and their intermediary.[10] As striking as this episode might be, the fact that a group of Italian sailors made an attempt at smuggling cigarettes is just evidence of the wider dynamics of smuggling in Libya. The collapse of the security sector has allowed international actors to gain a foothold in the country and exploit its instability. For the European organized crime, post-Gaddafi Libya has constituted a large market for the arms trade as well as a warehouse for legal and illegal goods to import to Europe. The extent of the connection between European criminal organizations and the militias is difficult to assess, but it is clear that their agency has contributed to shaping the Libyan trafficking sector.

One of the most evident examples of the capabilities of these transnational networks is the fuel smuggling ring that connected the Zawiya oil refinery to European markets via Malta and southern Italy. Based on an alliance between the notorious smuggler Fahmi Bin Khalifa and the chief of the Coast Guard of Zawiya, the network moved fuel from the Zawiya refinery to the coastal town of Zuwara. There, the fuel was moved via land to Tunisia and via sea to Maltese waters, where it was unloaded on a fleet of small ships and brought onshore. From Malta, smuggled fuel reached Italy, Spain, and France. The arrest of Bin Khalifa and other members of the ring in 2017 caused an involution of the phenomenon, which since has changed both in the methods and the actors involved.[11] However, its complexity and extensiveness have revealed the capabilities of the transnational smuggling networks based in Libya. Besides fuel, weapons and narcotics are the products most commonly moved to and from Europe. Cocaine and cannabis reach southern Europe sailing from Libyan ports.[12] On the other hand, Italian, Greek, and Maltese harbors often serve as a waypoint for the trafficking of prescription medicines from India reaching Libya.[13] In similar ways, southern Europe has been particularly present in Libya's weapons trafficking dynamics. For example, in the summer of 2017, a few months before HAF's conquest of Benghazi, the Shura Council controlling the city used a wide range of connections to purchase weapons. One of the middlemen that supplied mines and rocket launchers to the group was an Italian yacht businessman, who after the bankruptcy of his company, fled to Libya and used the remains of his fleet to smuggle weapons to Benghazi.[14] A more sophisticated smuggling ring was established by Abdurraouf Eshati, a Libyan arrested in the UK in November 2014. Being in contact with middlemen in Zintani, Eshati served as broker in a complex network that included Egyptians and Italians and whose main agent was a seventy-year-old Italian arms dealer already implicated in the trafficking of weapons to the Balkans in the 1990s.[15] In these and many other cases, Libya has provided an expanding weapons market to a transnational class of dealers and middlemen based in southern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. Soviet-manufactured rifles, modified blank guns, and homemade ammunition contribute to the constant supply of weapons purchased by militias and private citizens in Libya.

Conclusion

The evolution of smuggling in Libya since 2011 is a story deeply connected with the failure of the post-Gaddafi reconstruction. The attempt at incorporating militias into the state has clashed with the continuity of their chains of command. Largely independent, these militias have assumed a particular position vis-à-vis state structures, at the same time within and outside them. With a security sector largely based on this ambiguity, it is not surprising that the line dividing smugglers from the anti-smuggling apparatus is often blurred. Furthermore, in many areas the trafficking sector has emerged as a substitute for the formal economy, representing the only relief for a battered civilian population. In the words of a Libyan professor interviewed by the International Crisis Group, “smuggling here is a job; it is not a crime."[16] The new interim government will have to address the issue concurrently with the political reunification of the country. However, the smuggling sector, along with its social and economic consequences, is likely to continue daunting Libya in the years to come.

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[1] Mark Shaw and Fiona Mangan, “Illicit Trafficking and Libya's Transition: Profits and Losses” United States Institute of Peace, Peacework report no. 96 (February 2014), p. 7-8.


[2] Report by the UN Security Council Panel of Experts on Libya (2013), p. 33-35, (2014), p. 41-43, and (2015), p. 47-48.


[3] Mark Micallef, Raouf Farrah, Alexander Bish and Victor Tanner, “After the Storm: Organized crime across the Sahel-Sahara following upheaval in Libya and Mali” Global Initiative Against Organized Crime (2019), p. 53-55.


[4] For an overview on the evolution of drug trafficking in Libya after 2011: Fiona Mangan, “Illicit Drug Trafficking in Libya”, United States Institute of Peace, Peacework report no. 161 (May 2020).


[5] Mark Micallef, “Shifting sands: Libya's changing drug trafficking dynamics on the coastal and desert borders”, European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (2019), p. 23-25.


[6] Fiona Mangan, “Illicit Drug Trafficking”, p. 12-13 and 18-23.


[7] Mark Shaw and Fiona Mangan, “Illicit Trafficking”, p. 17-19.


[8] Report by the UN Security Council Panel of Experts on Libya (2013), p. 11.


[9] See for example the case of the Anas al-Dabbashi Brigade in Sabratha: Tim Eaton, “Libya's War Economy: Predation, Profiteering and State Weakness”, Chatham House (April 2018), p. 12-13.


[10] Patrick Kingsley and Sara Creta. “The Ship That Stopped 7,000 Migrants, and Smuggled 700,000 Cigarettes”, The New York Times (Sep. 28, 2020). Retrievable at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/28/world/europe/italy-warship-migrants-libya-cigarettes-smuggling.html


[11] Report by the UN Security Council Panel of Experts on Libya (2018), p. 38-45.


[12] Mark Micallef, “Shifting sands” p. 13-17; Fiona Mangan, “Illicit Drug Trafficking”, p. 8-13.


[13] Italian, Greek, and Maltese coast guards regularly seize cargoes of painkillers en route to Libia. See for example: “Sequestrato carico di 'droga del combattente'” Corriere della Sera (November 4, 2017). Retrievable at: https://www.corriere.it/cronache/17_novembre_03/gioia-tauro-sequestrato-carico-droga-combattente-traffico-gestito-isis-bc235e58-c06a-11e7-8b75-0df914d10fe2.shtml


[14] “Libia. Terrorismo e traffico d'armi, Ros arresta imprenditore italiano” Rai News 24 (December 1, 2019). Retrievable at: https://www.rainews.it/dl/rainews/articoli/libia-terrorismo-e-traffico-armi-ros-arresta-imprenditore-bolognese-7638feaf-a897-412a-931b-458a56c8362a.html?refresh_ce


[15] Report by the UN Security Council Panel of Experts on Libya (2016), p. 30-31. See also: “Libia, estradato in Italia Franco Giorgi, intermediario accusato di traffico d'armi.” Il Fatto Quotidiano (April 1, 2019). Retrievable at: https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2019/04/01/libia-bonafede-tripoli-rimanda-in-italia-il-trafficante-darmi-franco-giorgi/5078019/


[16] International Crisis Group, “How Libya's Fezzan Became Europe's New Border” (July 31, 2017), p. 5.