Seventy-four years since the United Nations recognised the equal and inalienable right of all humans to live freely and peacefully, a South Sudanese asylum seeker is demanding the international community live up to its own principles.
As the world marked Human Rights Day on Saturday, David Yambio marched to the UN’s refugee agency headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, to stage a second day of a sit-in alongside civil society organisations and fellow asylum seekers.
The 25-year-old was recruited as a child soldier before fleeing war both in his home country and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He arrived in Libya in 2018, where he was repeatedly detained and abused before reaching the Italian shores on board a dinghy in June.
Now he is on a mission: to make the pleas of thousands of refugees who are still enduring the horrors of Libya’s detention centres heard in Europe.
“We came together with civil society to give a voice to the people who have been silenced for years,” Yambio told Al Jazeera. “Their rights have been violated and the UNHCR has been watching passively.”
Yambio and his comrades-in-arms are asking the refugee agency to ensure that migrants in Libya can live under humane conditions, or else facilitate their evacuation to a safe country.
The sit-in was forcefully dispersed on January 10 as Libyan troops smashed up the protest site and arrested hundreds, taking them to the detention centre of Ain Zara.
Like other asylum seekers, Yambio said he believes the UNHCR called Libyan authorities to disperse the crowd stationed in front of its premises, a claim the organisation denied.
The UNCHR told Al Jazeera it “stands in solidarity with asylum seekers and refugees who live under extremely difficult conditions in Libya”.
“UNHCR has repeatedly stated that Libya is not a safe place for refugees and asylum seekers,” the agency said in a statement.
Since 2021, it facilitated the release of some 1,030 refugees and asylum seekers and 3,450 vulnerable refugees were evacuated or resettled out of Libya.
