Slavery in Libya

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Slavery in Libya^[1][2][3] has a long history and a lasting impact on the Libyan culture. It is closely connected with the wider context of slavery in North African and trans-Saharan slave trade.

Since Ancient times, the territory of modern Libya was a transit area for the slave trade from Sub-Saharan Africa across the Sahara desert to the Mediterranean Sea. The Trans-Saharan slave trade was known from antiquity and continued until the 20th-century. Slavery in Ottoman Libya was nominally prohibited in the 19th-century, but the abolition laws were not enforced.

During the Italian colonial period (1912–1951) the slavery and slave trade was finally suppressed in practice. Abolition was, however, a gradual and slow process, and the institution of slavery continued long into the colonial period, particularly in the interior desert areas, where the Italian control was weak. The Trans-Saharan slave trade in the interior of Libya was still in operation as late as the 1930s.

In the 21st-century, the Libyan slave trade of Africans across the Sahara continues, with open-air slave markets reported in a number of cities in Libya, including the capital city, Tripoli.^[4][5][6][7]