Libya - Reports from Libya generally don’t include words like “good news,” “getting better” or “progress.” They haven’t for some time.

And I can remember: I first saw Libya from the air, flying south towards my first Africa posting as a diplomat. That was 1963.

In the intervening half-century we have watched the Libyan people suffer. Despite an ocean of energy wealth beneath its sands, this land with its proud history suffered terribly under dictatorship. The bloody 2011 uprising left a shattered population still struggling to create a lasting peace with security for all. Now Libya stands with the international community working to end a criminal trade in migrants that has brutalized hundreds of thousands of the world’s poor—while taking over 12,000 lives since 2013.

Nearly 500 migrants already have died leaving Libya’s coast just since the start of this year. Another tragedy: the thousands of internally displaced Libyans—many of them homeless since 2011. 

And yet here we are in Libya today, returning as an official international delegation to restore IOM’s mission to its full strength for the first time since the United Nations ordered personnel to evacuate.

And with this return, I’m happy to affirm that change at last is happening. The International Organization for Migration, the United Nations entity I direct, has come to Tripoli on this date, March 22, 2017, to begin the long process of restoring IOM’s complete country effort. We will stand by Libya.

I have come to Tripoli as part of what IOM hopes will be a growing international commitment to Libya and its people.  There is a popular myth that says. the ills of our time are immutable, that they’re beyond our capacity to overcome, or that they’re hopelessly intractable

We will not accept that.

No, we are in Libya today making the opposite claim to affirm that. IOM and its many international partners want to stand by the Libyan people. United Nations agencies, non-governmental and civil society organizations will once again engage in raising the health, safety and living conditions of Libyans as well the millions of third country nationals who have made lives here—in many cases for decades.

This is a place IOM knows and has worked conscientiously in, even in the worst days of 2011, when rival groups of gunmen surged in street violence and Tripoli felt much more dangerous than it does today. I recall in that difficult year IOM evacuated over 200,000 migrant workers and repatriated them to 54 countries—at a cost of over $100 million.  We are doing similar moves to this very day—albeit not in the numbers we did during the height of the emergency

We are not blind. We are not naïve. IOM knows that violence hasn’t vanished. We have reported almost daily this year on the discovery of drowning victims washing onto Libya’s shores, or of gunshot victims found in mass graves. We monitor the many migrants languishing in inadequate detention centers, and report on those who have died from disease or neglect in some of those sites.

But by being present, bearing witness and distributing aid, IOM hopes to help Libya achieve the peace and prosperity we know it must have.

IOM works with the Libyan authorities to support migrants, but not only migrants. We work with Libyans to contribute to community stabilization and expanding and strengthening our support across the country.

I am visiting Libya today to raise the profile of the magnitude of needs in Libya. As Libya is an IOM member state, IOM is looking at how we can best work with Libyan authorities and all its people to support the large flows moving into the country and the many vulnerable people impacted by conflict across the region, including Libya itself.

This is just part of a new beginning. I am proud to take part.

William Lacy Swing is Director General of the International Organization for Migration, the United Nations Migration Agency