Libya

Arab, LibyanJPIMBGRN

Population

~3,900,000 (3.9-4.5 million)

Language

Arabic, Libyan

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Tripolitania, the Sirte coast and the Fezzan: Tripoli and the Jafara plain, Misrata, Zawiya, Khoms, Zliten, Tarhuna, Bani Walid, Gharyan and Zintan, Sirte, Sabha and the Fezzan oases

Libyan Arabs are the Arabic-speaking majority of western and southern Libya, about 3.9 million people in Tripoli, the coastal cities from Zawiya to Sirte, the Nafusa foothills and the oases of the Fezzan. Most descend from Amazigh (Berber) townspeople and villagers who took up Arabic over centuries and from the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym tribes who arrived in the eleventh century, and loyalties to tribes and cities such as the Warfalla, Misrata, Zintan, Tarhuna, Qadhadhfa, Magarha and Awlad Sulayman shape politics and the armed groups that have held power since 2011. Nearly all are settled: the tribes once known as Bedouin now live in towns, and only a few families still move with their herds. They speak the Tripolitanian and Fezzani dialects of Libyan Arabic and follow Sunni Islam of the Maliki school, while Salafi armed groups have destroyed many of the Sufi shrines their grandparents visited. Friday couscous or bazeen and long rounds of foamed tea mark family life.

Arab, CyrenaicanJPIMBGRN

Population

~1,700,000 (1.7-1.9 million)

Language

Arabic, Libyan

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Eastern Libya (Cyrenaica): Benghazi, the Jabal Akhdar (al-Bayda, Shahhat, al-Qubba), al-Marj, Derna, Tobruk and the Butnan, Ajdabiya and the oil crescent, and the Kufra oases

The Cyrenaican Arabs are the Arabic-speaking people of eastern Libya, about 1.7 million, living from Benghazi and the green uplands of the Jabal Akhdar to Derna, Tobruk, Ajdabiya and the Kufra oases. Most belong to the Sa'adi tribes descended from the Banu Sulaym, such as the Obeidat, Awaqir, Barasa, Darsa and Magharba, or to the client tribes attached to them, and tribal ties still decide marriage, politics and security. Almost all now live in towns and villages, though some families still herd sheep, goats and camels on the steppe. Their region was the heartland of the Sanusi Sufi order, which led the resistance to Italian rule under Omar al-Mukhtar and gave Libya its first king, and it lost a large part of its people in the Italian camps of 1929-1934 and thousands more in the Derna flood of 2023. They speak the eastern dialect of Libyan Arabic, close to that of the Bedouin of Egypt's Western Desert, and follow Sunni Islam of the Maliki school.

Amazigh, Jabal NafusahJPIMBGRN

Population

~220,000 (est. 190,000-250,000)

Language

Nafusi

Religion

Islam - Ibadi

Location

The Amazigh towns and villages of the Nafusa Mountains, north-western Libya: Nalut and Kabaw (Nalut district); Jadu and the Fassatu villages, Yefren and al-Qal'a, Kikla and Wazin (Jabal al Gharbi); and Nafusa families in Tripoli

The Nafusa Amazigh are the Berber people of the Nafusa Mountains, the escarpment that rises south-west of Tripoli, and with about 220,000 people the largest Amazigh-speaking community in Libya. Most follow Ibadi Islam, a school that is neither Sunni nor Shia, and speak Tanfusit at home and Arabic outside it, which sets them apart twice over from the Sunni Arab majority. Their hilltop towns of Nalut, Kabaw, Jadu and Yefren are crowned by fortified granaries, the qasr, in which each family once stored its grain and olive oil in stacked vaulted cells. Banned from using their language under Qadhafi, they were among the first to rise against him in 2011, and since then have taught Tamazight in their schools and celebrate the Amazigh New Year each January, while Libya's official clerics have denounced Ibadis as heretics.

Tuareg, TahaggartJPIMB

Population

~120,000-160,000 (estimate)

Language

Tahaggart Tamahaq

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Fezzan: Ghat district (Ghat, Al Awaynat, Tahala, the Akakus), Ubari and the Wadi al-Hayat, Tuareg quarters of Sabha and Murzuq; the Tuareg quarter of Ghadames; smaller numbers in Tripoli

Libya's Tuareg are Amazigh of the Sahara who call themselves Imuhagh or Kel Tamasheq. The oldest community is the Kel Ajjer of Ghat, at the foot of the Akakus mountains and their prehistoric rock art, a confederation split from its Algerian half by the colonial border; they speak Tamahaq and write it in the ancient Tifinagh letters. Many more came from Niger and Mali from the 1960s to the 1980s, fleeing drought and rebellion, and settled around Ubari and Sabha, so that today about 120,000 to 160,000 Tuareg live in Libya. Some 16,000 to 17,000 Tuareg families have never been given full Libyan nationality and live on provisional records that bar them from passports, land, bank accounts and school diplomas. Men still wear the indigo veil, women own the tent and play the one-string imzad, and the Ghat festival each winter draws Tuareg from across the Sahara.

Amazigh, ZuwarahJPIMBGRN

Population

~45,000 (est. 40,000-50,000)

Language

Nafusi

Religion

Islam - Ibadi

Location

Zuwara and its surrounding farms and coast (An-Nuqat al-Khams district), 100 km west of Tripoli; Zuwaran families in Tripoli

The Zuwara Amazigh, who call themselves At Willul, are the people of Zuwara, the only Berber town on Libya's Mediterranean coast, about 45,000 strong. They speak their own Berber dialect, Twillult, and follow Ibadi Islam, a school that is neither Sunni nor Shia, which sets them apart from the Sunni Arab towns that surround them. Fishing boats, palm gardens and a summer sea festival, Awessu, in which townspeople throw sea water to the sky, mark a coastal life unlike that of the mountain Amazigh. Since 2011 Zuwara has taught Tamazight in its schools and runs Libya's first Tamazight radio station, while its armed men have fought over the nearby Ras Ajdir crossing to Tunisia and its beaches have become a launching point for migrant boats to Europe.

Tubu, TedaJPIMBGRN

Population

~40,000-50,000 (estimate)

Language

Tedaga

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Murzuq district (Al Qatrun, Murzuq, Umm al-Aranib, Tajarhi, the road to the Chad and Niger borders); Kufra district (Kufra, Rebiana, Tazirbu); Tebu quarters of Sabha and Ubari

The Tebu are a Black Saharan people whose ancestors lived around the Tibesti mountains and the oases of southern Libya long before the Arab conquest. Libya's Tebu belong to the northern, Teda branch and speak Tedaga, a Saharan language unrelated to the Arabic and Amazigh spoken by every other native Libyan people. About 40,000 to 50,000 live mainly in Al Qatrun, Murzuq and Umm al-Aranib in the south-west and in the Kufra oases in the south-east, which Zuwayya Arabs took from them in 1840 and where Tebu families still live in poorer quarters on the town's edge. Branded Chadians under Qadhafi, many lost their papers and some are still without Libyan nationality, while since 2011 their fighters have held the desert roads to Chad and Niger and the gold-trading town of Al Qatrun, at the cost of repeated clashes with Arab and Tuareg neighbours. Women keep clan history alive in praise songs, sung by one voice while the others clap and answer.

Amazigh, GhadamesJPIMBGRN

Population

~12,000 (est. 10,000-15,000)

Language

Ghadamès

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Ghadames oasis and the nearby village of Tunin (Nalut district), at the meeting point of Libya, Algeria and Tunisia; Ghadamsi families in Tripoli

The Ghadamsis are the Berber people of Ghadames, an oasis town of about 12,000 where the borders of Libya, Algeria and Tunisia meet, and keepers of a language spoken nowhere else. For two thousand years their merchants ran caravans across the Sahara, and their walled old town, a World Heritage site, is built as one great house: covered lanes stay cool below, while the roofs form a separate town where women once moved freely from house to house. Rooms are painted in bright red patterns of suns, palms and hands, an art the town's women are reviving. Unlike the Ibadi Amazigh of the north, they are Sunni Muslims of the Maliki school; the old town was emptied in the 1980s but fills again each autumn when families return for the date festival.

SawknahIMBGRN

Population

11,000

Language

Libyan Arabic

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Sokna oasis, Jufra district, central Libya

The Sawknah are the people of Sokna, the westernmost of the three Jufra oases in the centre of Libya, a town of palm gardens and springs that has been a halt on the Saharan caravan road since antiquity. Sokna once had its own Berber language, a cousin of the speech of Awjila and of Egypt's Siwa oasis, but by 1911 only four or five old people spoke it, and it survives today only in place names. Its families descend from the old oasis people and from Riyah Arabs who settled among them in the thirteenth century, and all now speak Libyan Arabic. The town's walled old quarter, a maze of mud-brick lanes around a central keep, was bulldozed between 1998 and 2003, and its people live from dates, small farms and government work.

Amazigh, AwjilahJPGRN

Population

2,700

Language

Awjilah

Religion

Islam

Location

Awjila oasis, Al Wahat district, Cyrenaica (eastern Libyan Sahara)

The Awjila Berbers are the last speakers of Awjili, an ancient Amazigh language of the Awjila oasis in Libya's eastern Sahara, 250 kilometres south-east of Ajdabiya. Only some 2,000 to 3,000 people still speak it, nearly all of them middle-aged or older, after decades in which Amazigh languages were banned from schools and public life and children grew up in Arabic. The oasis has been inhabited for at least 2,500 years: the Greek historian Herodotus described people who came here every summer to harvest dates, and later writers said they slept on their ancestors' tombs to receive dreams. Its twelfth-century mud-brick mosque, roofed with 21 conical domes, is pictured on Libya's 20-dinar note. Their Arabic-speaking children and grandchildren, the Wadshili, share their families, mosques and date gardens.

Arab, SudaneseJPIMBGRN

Population

315,000

Language

Arabic, Sudanese

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Kufra (the main entry point), Benghazi, Ajdabiya and the towns of the Jabal al-Akhdar in the east; Tripoli and its suburbs (Jfara) in the west; smaller numbers in Misrata, Sabha and the Fezzan

Sudanese are the largest foreign community in Libya, about 315,000 people in 2026 besides the Zaghawa, most of them refugees from the war that broke out in Sudan in April 2023. Before the war a smaller community of Sudanese teachers, accountants, engineers, cooks and labourers had lived in Libya for decades and was better accepted than most migrants; since 2023 families from Khartoum and Darfur, among them Fur, Masalit and other Darfuri peoples as well as Arabic-speaking northerners, have crossed the desert to the oasis of Kufra, living in shelters of cardboard and palm fronds before moving north to Ajdabiya, Benghazi and Tripoli. About half live in the east and most of the rest in the west. Unlike most migrants in Libya they include many women and children, and they bring the Sufi-coloured Islam, colloquial Arabic, music and foods such as ful and kisra of their homeland.

NigeriensDiscovery

Population

182,000

Language

Hausa and French (common languages); Zarma-Songhai, Fulfulde, Kanuri, Tamasheq and others at home

Religion

Sunni Islam (Maliki school)

Location

Tripoli, Misrata and Zliten, the farms of al-Murqub (Garabulli, Qasr al-Akhyar), al-Jafara, Zawiya, and the Fezzan (Sabha, Murzuq, Brak, Jufra)

Nigeriens are the second-largest foreign community in Libya, about 182,000 people in 2026 besides the Tuareg of the far southwest, three in four of them in the west around Tripoli, Misrata and Zliten. Most are young Hausa and Zarma men from Niger's main migrant regions, Tahoua, Tillabéri and Dosso, who come for a year or two to work on farms, building sites and in day labour, then go home with their savings, a circular migration that goes back to the oil boom of the 1970s and a 1988 Libya-Niger agreement on the movement of people. They reach Libya by the desert road from Agadez through Dirkou and Madama to Qatrun and Sabha, and many are sent back the same way: trucks of deportees regularly arrive at Séguédine and Dirkou in Niger's Kawar oases. Nigerien Tuareg who work around Ubari and Ghat live among Libya's own Tuareg and are counted with them. Nearly all are Sunni Muslims, and Hausa serves as a common language among Nigeriens of different peoples.

Arab, Egyptian generalJPIMB

Population

~162,000 (150,000-170,000)

Language

Arabic, Egyptian

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Benghazi and the east (Ajdabiya, Tobruk, the Jabal al-Akhdar farms), Tripoli and the northwest (Misrata, Zawiya, Sirte), and the Fezzan oases around Sabha

Egyptians are one of Libya's three largest migrant communities: about 160,000 Muslim Egyptians in 2026, beside a smaller Coptic Christian minority, nearly all of them men who work in construction, farming, fishing, bakeries and small shops while their families stay at home. Most come from the villages of Upper Egypt (Minya, Asyut, Sohag, Beni Suef, Fayoum) and the Nile Delta, and they are split almost evenly between the east, where Benghazi and the farms of the Green Mountain lie a day's drive from the border at Salloum, and the west around Tripoli and Misrata. The community has risen and fallen with politics for fifty years: hundreds of thousands worked in Qadhafi's Libya, mass expulsions came in 1976, 1985 and after 2011, and since 2025 a national deportation campaign has sent thousands home. Egyptian Arabic, which every Libyan knows from Egyptian films and television, and a shared Sunni faith make them the most familiar of foreign workers, yet many live without papers and some use Libya as the starting point for the sea crossing to Italy and Greece.

ChadianIMBDiscovery

Population

~85,000-90,000

Language

French

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Kufra, Benghazi and Ajdabiya in the east; Zawiya, the farms of al-Murqub (Qasr al-Akhyar, Garabulli, Tarhuna), Misrata, Tripoli and the Nafusa (Gharyan, Yefren) in the west; Murzuq and Sabha in the Fezzan

Chadians, about 91,000 nationals in 2026 (85,000-90,000 of them outside the Zaghawa and Tebu groups), are Libya's fourth-largest foreign community and the one most evenly spread across the country, from the oasis of Kufra on the old caravan road from Faya to the farms around Tripoli and the building sites of Benghazi. They are mostly Muslim men from Chad's north, centre and east: Daza (Gorane), Chadian Arabs, Kanembu, Maba of Ouaddaï and others, who speak Chadian Arabic with one another. Their ties to Libya are old and tangled: Qadhafi's wars and his Islamic Legion drew Chadians north, about 300,000 were working in Libya when the 2011 war sent tens of thousands home, and Chadian rebel groups still keep bases in the Fezzan. Most now come for seasonal farm work and construction, and many cross the desert again to the gold fields of the Tibesti border.

Arab, TunisianJPIMBGRN

Population

70,000

Language

Arabic, Tunisian

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Western Libya (Tripoli, Misrata, Zawiya, Zuwara and the Nafusa towns); fewer in Benghazi, Al Bayda and the oil ports

Tunisians are the largest community from the Maghreb in Libya, about 70,000 people living mostly in the western cities between the Tunisian border and Misrata. They first came with Libya's oil boom in the 1960s and their numbers have swung with politics ever since: tens of thousands were expelled in 1985, most fled in 2011, and many returned to work as builders, mechanics, bakers, nurses and teachers. Most are men working on their own, alongside settled families and Tunisian wives of Libyans, while a far larger flow of traders and day workers crosses the Ras Ajdir and Wazin-Dehiba border posts without living in Libya. They share Libyans' Maliki Sunni Islam, but their Tunisian Arabic, laced with French words, marks them as outsiders, and armed groups and prisons in western Libya have held Tunisian workers at times of tension between the two countries.

NigerianIMBDiscovery

Population

32,000

Language

English

Religion

Christianity - Neo-Pentecostalism

Location

Benghazi, Tripoli and its western suburbs (Abu Salim, Ain Zara, Janzour, Swani bin Adam), Zawiya, Misrata; Sabha, Murzuq and Qatrun in the Fezzan

Nigerians in Libya, about 32,000 people in 2026, are mostly young people from southern Nigeria, above all Edo and Delta states, who came on the Sahara route through Niger hoping to cross the Mediterranean to Italy and are stuck working in Libya's cities to pay their way. Unlike most sub-Saharan migrants in Libya, many are Christians: Pentecostal and Catholic Nigerians fill the migrant congregations of Tripoli and Benghazi, and Amnesty International has documented Nigerians abducted and abused for their faith. Women and girls among them are the main victims of the trafficking networks that hold migrants in 'connection houses' for forced prostitution. Nigeria's embassy and the International Organization for Migration fly hundreds home every year from Libya's detention centres.

Egyptian, CopticJPIMB

Population

~26,000 (19,000-38,000)

Language

Arabic, Egyptian

Religion

Christianity - Coptic Orthodox (Oriental Orthodox)

Location

Tripoli, Benghazi and Misrata, where the three Coptic churches stand; work sites along the coast and in the east

Coptic Christians are a minority among the Egyptian workers in Libya, perhaps one in seven of about 188,000 Egyptians, some 26,000 people, nearly all men from the villages of Minya, Asyut and Sohag in Upper Egypt who work in construction, farming and crafts beside their Muslim neighbours. Three Coptic Orthodox churches, Saint Mark's in Tripoli, Saint Antonios in Benghazi and Saint Mary and Saint George in Misrata, have served them since the Qadhafi years, though attacks on the Benghazi and Misrata churches in 2012-2013 pushed worship into quieter forms. In February 2015 Islamic State militants beheaded twenty Coptic workers, thirteen of them from the village of al-Our in Minya, and a Ghanaian companion on a Libyan beach; the Coptic Church honours them as the 21 Martyrs of Libya, and the cross tattooed on a Copt's wrist can still single a worker out. Poverty at home keeps them coming, by the same brokers and desert roads as other Egyptians.

Bengali, MuslimJPIMBDiscovery

Population

~23,000 (23,118 counted by IOM, March-April 2026)

Language

Bengali

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Benghazi and the east (about 13,600); Zliten, Misrata, Sirte and Greater Tripoli in the west (about 9,200)

About 23,000 Bangladeshis live in Libya, nearly all young Muslim men from rural Bangladesh who came for construction, cleaning, factory and farm work. Unlike most migrants in Libya, more than half live in the east: Benghazi alone holds about 10,000, many of them flown in on visas sold by brokers, and others live in the coastal towns of Zliten, Misrata and Sirte and in Tripoli. Libya has become the main launching point for Bangladeshis trying to reach Italy by sea, and every few weeks a charter flight carries home 150 to 180 men released from detention centres such as Ganfouda in Benghazi. They speak Bengali among themselves, follow the Hanafi school with the saint and shrine devotion of Bengali Islam, and have no mosque, school or association of their own in Libya.

Arab, Syrian (Muslim traditions)JPIMBGRNDiscovery

Population

15,400

Language

Standard Arabic

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Benghazi, Tripoli, Ajdabiya, Tobruk, Misrata, Sirte, Zawiya and Bayda

Syrians in Libya, about 15,000 people counted in 2026, are workers and families spread along the coast from Tobruk to Zawiya, with the largest communities in Benghazi and Tripoli. Syrian craftsmen and traders worked in Libya before 2011, and after Syria's war began thousands of families came here, since Libya was one of the few Arab countries still letting Syrians in; later Benghazi's airport became a gateway for Syrians heading for the boats to Italy. Syrian bakeries, shawarma and sweet shops are now part of Libyan street life, and when Syrian consular teams came to Benghazi and Tripoli in 2025 they renewed tens of thousands of passports. Since the fall of Syria's old government in December 2024 some families have gone home, but most remain, working in construction, trade and food.

GhanaianIMBDiscovery

Population

12,900

Language

English

Religion

Christianity - Protestantism

Location

Tripoli, Zawiya, Misrata and Benghazi; Gharyan and the Nafusa foothills, Tarhuna, Zuwara; Brak, Ubari and al-Jufra in the south

Ghanaians in Libya are mostly young men from the Bono and Bono East regions of central Ghana, around Kintampo, Techiman and Nkoranza, who cross the Sahara through Niger to work for a year or two and send money home. They plaster, tile and lay blocks on the building sites of Tripoli, Zawiya, Misrata and Benghazi, often living in unfinished buildings they are working on. Unlike most migrants in Libya, many are Christians, who pray and read the Bible quietly together in their rooms. Ghana's embassy and the International Organization for Migration fly a few hundred stranded Ghanaians home most years.

MalianIMBDiscovery

Population

11,500

Language

French

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Tripoli, Zawiya and the western coast; Kufra, Sabha, Murzuq and al-Qatrun in the south and east; Misrata, Benghazi and al-Jufra

Malians in Libya are young men from Mali who cross the Sahara through Niger or Algeria to work, some on their way to Europe and most to earn money for families at home. They gather at the day-labour points of Tripoli and Zawiya, in the date gardens and building sites of the southern oases from Sabha to Kufra, and in Misrata and Benghazi, and nearly all are Sunni Muslims from Mali's Bambara, Soninke, Fulani, Songhai and other peoples. Many live without papers, so arrest, detention and extortion are a constant risk, and every few months a chartered flight carries a hundred or more of them home to Bamako. Malian Tuareg, who have come to Libya's Tuareg towns since the 1970s, are counted with the Tuareg.

Punjabi, WesternJPIMB

Population

~4,300 (4,303 counted by IOM, March-April 2026)

Language

Western Panjabi

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Benghazi (about 3,000) and the east; Sirte, Sabha, Brak and a few in Tripoli

About 4,300 Pakistanis live in Libya, a remnant of the 150,000 who built roads, housing and oil installations in the 1970s and 1980s. Most are thought to be Punjabis, as most Pakistani emigrants are, with Pashtuns from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa among them; they work as electricians, technicians, builders and factory hands. Two-thirds now live in Benghazi, where Pakistan is opening a consulate as its ties with the eastern authorities grow, and the Pakistani community school there has taught children since 1973. Libya has also become a launching point for young Pakistanis trying to reach Italy by sea, and dozens have drowned off its coast since 2025. They are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school, many keeping the shrine devotion of Punjabi Sufism.

EritreanDiscovery

Population

3,900

Language

Tigre

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Tripoli (Abu Salim, Ain Zara, Hai al-Andalus, Janzour), al-Shwayrif, Benghazi, Zawiya and the farms south of Tripoli

Eritreans in Libya are refugees who fled Eritrea's open-ended national service and are trying to reach Europe across the Mediterranean. Most are young Tigrinya-speaking Christians of the Eritrean Orthodox and evangelical churches, with Muslim Tigre and Saho among them. On the way many have been held for months in traffickers' warehouses around Bani Walid and Kufra until relatives abroad paid ransoms, and the survivors wait in Tripoli's poorer districts, in detention centres or on the UN refugee agency's lists for a place on an evacuation flight. Because the same networks, some run by Eritreans, also hold Ethiopians, Sudanese and Somalis, Eritreans are among the people most exposed to torture and extortion in Libya.

Arab, PalestinianJPIMBGRN

Population

~3,700 or more

Language

Levantine Arabic

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Benghazi, Misrata, Sirte, Tobruk and the older families of Tripoli

Palestinians in Libya are a community of a few thousand, families who came from the late 1960s as teachers, doctors, engineers and civil servants recruited by the Libyan state, joined later by workers from the refugee camps of Lebanon and Syria. Their time in Libya has been unsettled: in 1995 Qadhafi expelled thousands of them in protest at the Oslo Accords, leaving families stranded for months in a desert camp on the Egyptian border, and most of those who stayed left during and after the 2011 war. The largest group now lives in Benghazi, with others in Misrata, Sirte, Tobruk and the older families of Tripoli, where Levantine Arabic at home, dishes such as maqluba and musakhan, and the keys of family houses lost in 1948 keep a Palestinian identity alive. They are not Libyan citizens and live on residence permits, with pensions, student grants and access to schools and hospitals that both of Libya's rival governments granted them in 2023.

South SudaneseDiscovery

Population

2,800

Language

Various (Dinka, Nuer, Bari, Zande, Shilluk); Arabic as lingua franca

Religion

Christianity

Location

Tripoli and the northwest; a few in Benghazi and the east

South Sudanese in Libya are a small community of about 2,800 people, nearly all in Tripoli and the northwest, most of them young men who crossed the Sahara through Sudan hoping to find work or to reach Europe. Many had lived for years in Khartoum before the 2023 war in Sudan pushed them north, and unlike the Muslim Sudanese around them most are Christians from the Dinka, Nuer and other peoples of South Sudan. South Sudan has no embassy in Libya, so those caught without papers can spend years in detention centres such as Ain Zara before anyone arranges their release. A few worship with other African migrants at the Catholic church of Saint Francis in Tripoli.

Filipino, TagalogJPGRN

Population

~2,000 (est. 1,500-2,500)

Language

Tagalog

Religion

Christianity - Roman Catholicism

Location

Benghazi, Al Bayda, Derna and Tobruk in the east; Tripoli and Misrata in the west

About 2,000 Filipinos live in Libya, most of them nurses and clinical instructors in public hospitals, with some engineers and oil workers. More than half work in the east, in Benghazi, Al Bayda, Derna and Tobruk, and the rest in Tripoli and Misrata. Before 2011 more than 13,000 worked in Libya; most left in the revolution, and the Philippines has barred new deployments since 2014, so the community is largely made up of veterans who stayed through the wars. As Catholics in a Muslim country they fill much of the Friday Mass at Tripoli's St. Francis church, while in Benghazi, whose church was destroyed, they worship in a hospital room, and a Filipino workers' association and a Filipino school keep community life going there.

EthiopiansDiscovery

Population

~1,800 (1,800-2,300)

Language

Amharic (primary), Oromo, Tigrinya, others

Religion

Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity and Sunni Islam (mixed)

Location

Tripoli (Abu Salim, Hai al-Andalus), al-Shwayrif, Qasr bin Ghashir, Benghazi, Zuwara and Tazirbu

Ethiopians in Libya are young Oromo, Amhara and Tigrayan migrants and refugees who came overland through Sudan, most of them hoping to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. They enter by the desert route through Kufra and Tazirbu, where traffickers hold many for ransom, and wait in Tripoli's poorer districts or in the towns on the road north. Christians among them, members of the Ethiopian Orthodox and evangelical churches, remember the 2015 killing of about 30 Ethiopian and Eritrean Christian migrants by Islamic State militants in Libya. Ethiopia has no embassy in Libya, so the International Organization for Migration arranges the papers for those who return home.

SomaliJPIMBGRN

Population

1,600

Language

Somali

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Greater Tripoli (Swani Bin Adam, Hai al-Andalus, Tajoura), Benghazi, Zuwara

About 1,600 Somalis are in Libya, mostly young men, with some women, who crossed Ethiopia and Sudan on the smuggling route Somalis call tahriib, hoping to reach Italy. Nearly two-thirds stay around Tripoli, in the southern suburb of Swani Bin Adam and in Hai al-Andalus, and most of the rest in Benghazi, with a few at Zuwara on the western coast, a departure point for boats. Many spend months in detention or in the hands of kidnappers who demand ransoms from relatives abroad, and Somalia's government now flies home several hundred a year from Libyan detention with European Union and International Organization for Migration support. They are Shafi'i Sunni Muslims, held together in Libya by clan ties and money sent through hawala from relatives in the diaspora.

Algerian, Arabic-speakingJPIMBGRN

Population

1,000

Language

Arabic, Algerian

Religion

Islam - Sunni

Location

Western Libya (Misrata, the Zawiya coast, the Nafusa towns) and the Algerian border oases of Ghat, Ghadames and Daraj

Algerians in Libya are a small community of about a thousand, what remains of a migration that numbered some 19,000 in the 1980s. Teachers, doctors and lawyers came at Qadhafi's invitation in the 1970s, a much larger wave of traders and craftsmen followed Algeria's 1988 crisis, and more arrived during the civil war of the 1990s; most left again in 2011, when Algeria evacuated about 4,000 of its citizens. Those who stayed run shops and repair workshops and work as barbers, mechanics and builders, many of them in Misrata and the coastal towns west of Tripoli, while others live in the border oases of Ghat and Ghadames, where trade with Djanet and Debdeb crosses the frontier. They share Libyans' Maliki Sunni Islam but speak Algerian Darja, and after years without an embassy they again have a consulate in Tripoli.