Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, announced on Wednesday that it resumed medical activities in two detention centers in Tripoli, almost three months after suspending its work.
According to MSF, this comes after recent talks with Libya’s Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM), in which the organization received assurances that “certain basic conditions would be met in the detention centres, enabling us to resume our activities in line with medical ethics and humanitarian principles.”
These conditions include: preventing the use of violence against detained people and ensuring the safety of MSF teams; allowing our medical staff unhindered and sustained access to the detention centres; allowing detained people unfettered access to our medical services; and ensuring full respect for the medical confidentiality of people held in the detention centres.
“While we welcome the assurances made by Libyan authorities that they would address the concerns that compelled us to suspend our activities last June, enabling us once again to provide essential medical care to detained people, we continue to strongly call for an end to this system of arbitrary and indefinite detention in Libya,” MSF said in a statement.
“MSF also reiterates calls for the closure of these detention centres, for the release of all the people detained in them, and for adequate humanitarian assistance and protection services to be provided to them upon release, including urgent voluntary repatriation and resettlement out of Libya.”