Amnesty International released a report Thursday stating that migrants and refugees detained in Libyan detention centers face harrowing sexual violence from guards, including being forced to trade sex for clean food and water.

The report is based on interviews with 53 refugees and migrants who were intercepted in the central Mediterranean and disembarked in western Libya between January 2020 and June 2021. According to the report, during the first six months of 2021, the Libyan coastguard intercepted at sea and returned to Libya an estimated 15,000 people, while over 700 people died along the route.

The report states that, since late 2020, Libyan Authorities have legitimised two informal detention centers with a history of abuse against refugees and migrants by integrating them into the official migration detention infrastructure run by the Interior Ministry’s Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM). Although all seven DCIM centers show documented patterns of gross human rights violations, an estimated 6100 people were transferred to them by the end of June 2021.

As per the report, detainees at the Al-Mabani detention center were tortured and subjected to various forms of ill-treatment, as well as inhuman detention conditions, extortion, and forced labour. Further, male guards at the Shara’ al-Zawiya detention centers raped women detainees and subjected them to various types of sexual violence. The guards coerced them into sexual intercourse in return for clean food, water or their freedom, brutally beating those who resisted.

Moreover, the report states that despite a decade-long history of documented abuse, EU and member states continue to offer material support to Libyan authorities. They pursue migration policies that allow the Libyan coastguard to intercept refugees and migrants trying to flee by sea to safety and return them to Libya forcibly, where they are subjected to human rights violations. Earlier this year, a UN report blamed the policy decisions of EU member states and Libya for the deaths caused along the central Mediterranean route.

The report urged the EU and its member states to suspend cooperation with Libya on migration and border control. It also called on Libyan authorities to close all detention centres for migrants.