The mass exodus of skilled and unskilled foreign workers has left vast gaps in Libya’s labour market which, in turn, has disrupted the delivery of services and the country’s economic recovery more broadly. Whilst labour migration of highly skilled workers is facilitated through government authorities and private sector actors, labour migration of workers in lower skilled occupations remains unregulated and unmanaged resulting in labour demand being met through irregular migration flows into and through Libya. Within the labour market for lower skilled occupations, not only is there no reliable data or information, but successive initiatives by government authorities over the last ten (10) years to establish mechanisms for ‘regularizing’ irregular economic migrants have achieved little success. Assessing and addressing these challenges through a labour market assessment to be funded through this project and migration policies and programmes that effectively fill national labour market gaps will be critical to Libya’s reconstruction and economic recovery.
IOM will work with the Ministry of Labour to strengthen the capacity of the ministry to monitor labour market dynamics and develop evidence-based initiatives to promote the regularizing of irregular labour migrants engaged in unskilled occupations within the agriculture sector. Within the framework of the resources available under the IDF, this project has been limited to the agriculture sector with the expectation that it can act as a seed project for expanded cooperation and capacity building in labour migration programmes in other sectors in the future.