This report is a synthesis of the research conducted between May and December 2018 for the monthly briefs under the ‘Monitoring the Political Economy of Human Smuggling in Libya and the Greater Sahara’ project funded under the North of Africa and Sahel and Lake Chad windows of the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa.

The project began in May 2018. However, this report benefits from prior research conducted by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, which enabled us to set the findings in the context of developments that have taken place in the geographies of interest since mid-2017. It follows and is a companion to ‘The Human Conveyor Belt – trends in human tracking and smuggling in post-revolution Libya’, a document that traces the rapid expansion of human smuggling and trafficking between 2011 and 2016.