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"These are devices that are used by traffickers for their smuggling activities. So this decision we have taken on the European Union level will help (in) making their businesses and their lives a bit more complicated," Federica Mogherini, the EU's chief foreign policy official, said at a news conference Monday.

The EU said the restrictions will not prevent exports or sales when they are "meant for legitimate uses by the civilian population, for instance for fishermen, who may need motors for their boats."

Many fleeing Libya hope to escape the volatile situation and civil unrest that has rocked the country following the death of its ousted dictator, Moammar Gadhafi.

On the whole, the migrants come from across Africa and the Middle East, some fleeing violence and persecution and others looking for economic refuge.

Mogherini said the EU would continue to work with Libya to help the country out of its security crisis.

EU foreign ministers also agreed to renew the bloc's mission to assist Libyan authorities with border management, law enforcement and criminal justice, particularly along the country's southern borders.

"Libya has enough resources -- including human resources, economic resources and natural resources -- to find its own way out of this political crisis, which is the essential precondition to work on security issues and also on migration," she said.

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EU says it will limit inflatable boat exports to Libya to stop traffickers - CNN

In July, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the self-proclaimed leader of the Libyan National Army, one of the major armed groups in the battle for Libya, announcedthat his forces had liberated Benghazi from jihadist fighters. Although Benghazis emancipation was viewed by many as a welcome development, it does little to push back the massive tide of migrants using Libya as a transit country nor to prevent the numerous abuses perpetrated against them. Nearly 11,000 migrantsarrived on Italian shores in just the last five days of June, following nearly 80,000 in the first half of 2017.Over 2,000have perished at sea since the start of this year. The vast majority came from sub-Saharan Africa and embarked from the Libyan coast.

The European Union (EU) has been searching for a way to stem the flow of migrants and handle the tens of thousands who arrive in Italy on a daily basis. The EUs current policy approach aims to shut off the route through the central Mediterranean and strengthen Libyan coastal patrol and enforcement capacities at sea. But it is unlikely to be effective or humane, given the sheer volume of migrants and the number of groups that profit from trafficking them, not to mention theweakness of the Libyan navyand other official security structures.

Before 2011, former Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi shrewdly exploited his ability to use his country as a valve on migration, extracting hundreds of millions of dollars and other concessions (such as high-profile visits and increased trade and cooperation) from EU leaders in exchange for more stringent border enforcement by Libyan authorities. In fact, the recent agreement between the EU and the internationally-recognized Presidency Council of Libya revives a 2008 agreement between Libya and Italy that was designed to control illegal migration at that time. Nearly 11,000 migrants arrived on Italian shores in just the last five days of June.

That policy helped slow the movement of Africans to Europe by keeping potential migrants in Libya, where they were subjected to poor

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Europe's Libya Problem - Foreign Affairs

SHARARA OIL FIELD, Libya (Reuters) - When the head of Libya's state energy company visited Sharara oil field in early July, community leaders and workers crowded into a conference room to ask about jobs, training and services for local people.

When, they asked, would their villages start to see the benefit of the country's rising oil production?

"You've been very patient," Mustafa Sanalla reassured them, before adding: "You need to be patient a little longer."

Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) raised output to more than one million barrels per day (bpd) at the end of June for the first time since 2013, a feat that seemed near impossible after the chaos that followed the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The NOC did it by cajoling community leaders, shaming blockaders and navigating a bewildering range of tribal feuds as it reopened fields and patched up infrastructure.

But the comeback, crucial to Libya's survival, is fragile.

To keep it going, NOC chief Sanalla has to tour the country regularly, placating restive armed factions and local groups while at the same time tussling with the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli over budget and control over the oil sector.

Even if the NOC can continue to stop the port and field blockades that crippled Libya's production in recent years, its goal of pushing production to 1.25 million bpd later this year will be difficult to achieve.

Output is already wavering due to problems linked to long shutdowns and a lack of maintenance and investment.

Idled pipelines have corroded, thieves have stolen copper wiring at desert oil facilities. No new drilling has been done for three years and few foreign contractors have returned. Funds to replace and maintain infrastructure are badly needed.

"Unless we have the money, not only can we not increase production, we cannot sustain production," Sanalla told Reuters as he flew back from the visit to Sharara and another southwestern field called El Feel. "Until now we haven't received one penny."

Among the parties closely watching the situation is OPEC, which wants to bolster global oil prices. OPEC exempted members Libya and Nigeria from a deal to cut output that took effect in January, but the group is now considering if and when quickly rising production should be capped.

Sanalla will share his production plans at a meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers in Russia on Saturday.

Libya has the biggest proven oil reserves in Africa. Before the uprising that killed Gaddafi, it was pumping around 1.6 million bpd, much of it light, sweet crude shipped to Europe.

From 2013, however, shutdowns and fighting linked to a messy conflict that spread across the country brought the sector to its knees.

Militia leaders closed ports and pipelines, militants set storage tanks ablaze. Some oil facilities were plundered. Blockades were set up by armed groups demanding salary payments or seeking to cut off a source of government revenues.

A government set up in the east of the country tried, and failed, to sell its own oil through a parallel national oil company in Benghazi.

The NOC in Tripoli survived the conflicts relatively unscathed, emerging as perhaps the only major institution that could function effectively across the country.

Appointed NOC chairman in May 2014, Sanalla and his colleagues travel freely to meet people, unlike the country's politicians who are largely split between east and west and rarely venture beyond their base.

Last summer, with production languishing below 250,000 bpd, Sanalla began a campaign against the blockades, criss-crossing Libya's huge land mass in an eight-seat propeller plane.

"Since last July, for one year, I'm always moving - all the oil fields, all the tribes, all the blockaders. I sit down with all of them and explain the problem," said Sanalla, 56, a chemical engineer and former operations manager who has worked at the NOC for more than three decades. "To solve the problems you need face-to-face dialogue."

A big breakthrough came in September when Ibrahim Jathran, an armed group leader who had closed several key ports and whom Sanalla vocally denounced, lost control of the terminals to eastern-based military commander Khalifa Haftar.

Haftar, widely seen to harbor national ambitions, quickly allowed the NOC to reopen the ports and connected fields.

Three months later a two-year blockade on pipelines leading to Sharara and El Feel was lifted near the western town of Zintan, after months of NOC mediation with the factions involved. The fields now account for about of third of Libya's total output.

During Sanalla's visit to El Feel and Sharara, he warmly greeted employees, leaders of the local community and turbaned guards, pausing for selfies and handshakes before leading discussions over local conditions and requests for aid.

At Sharara, Sanalla handed over provisions for the nearby town of Ubari, including hundreds of beds and equipment for schools. A community leader at El Feel said he needed water pumps, petrol stations, football pitches and leisure parks.

Sanalla would not give details about exactly what he has had to promise in his various deals to reopen fields and pipelines. But he insists he has never offered payments.

"The issue is to explain to people today in two oil fields that we have a partnership with the stakeholders," Sanalla said. He said his message is "production is very crucial to you as well, not just to us".

There are limits and risks to the NOC's strategy.

The Government of National Accord in Tripoli has failed to extend its authority or win over factions in the east since it started governing in March last year, meaning bigger political and security threats to Libya's production still loom.

Relations between the GNA and NOC have also soured over a contract dispute with German oil firm Wintershall, which has two concessions in the east. The NOC accused the government of using the dispute to extend its power over the oil sector and accused Wintershall of colluding with the GNA.

Sanalla says politicians need to stop competing for control of oil resources and give the NOC the budget it needs.

The GNA responds that even with oil output on the rise, funding is limited. According to the central bank, oil revenues are expected to reach 16.6 billion Libyan dinars ($11.4 billion) this year, still well short of the 21 billion dinars ($14.5 billion) needed for state salary payments alone.

Workers and locals remain restless, worn down by years sliding living standards. Even oil employees have trouble accessing salaries.

Sharara, where output is about 270,000 bpd, suffered brief closures when valves were switched off in March and April, and again when staff went on strike after a worker drowned in a swimming pool at the field in June.

El Feel, now pumping about 60,000 bpd, did not open until May because of a protest by guards, who in reality are militiamen with local loyalties.

Sanalla says the NOC is doing what it can for communities near oil facilities, but it takes time.

"We cannot substitute (for) a government," Sanalla said in an interview with Reuters in May. "We cannot do everything."

Editing by Sonya Hepinstall

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Backing of workers, communities key to Libya's oil revival - Reuters

(Beirut) The Supreme Fatwa Committee linked to one of Libyas competing governments should repeal a discriminatory religiousedict accusing `Ibadi faith followers in Libya of deviance and adherence to an infidel doctrine, Human Rights Watch said today. The government linked to the committee, the Interim Government based in Al-Bayda, and parliament have yet to respond publicly to this edict.

In July 2017, the Supreme Fatwa Committee under the General Authority for Endowments and Islamic Affairs, the religious authority of the Interim Government, issued a religious edict or fatwa on the suitability of an `Ibadi preacher leading prayers in a mosque in the Nafussa Mountains, in western Libya. In the edict, the committee said that the minority sect of Islam was a misguided and aberrant group. They are Kharijites with secret beliefs and infidels without dignity. Kharijites is used to describe Muslims who rebelled against the Caliphate in the early ages of Islam.

Religious authorities in Libya should stop pandering to extremists by castigating minorities in incendiary language, said Eric Goldstein, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. The Interim Government should repudiate this dangerous edict and affirm that all faiths and sects deserve tolerance and equal protection.

`Ibadi Muslims number between 300,000 and 400,000 in Libya, according to the Libyan Tmazight Congress, an organization that advocates on behalf of members of the Amazigh community. The `Ibadi faith is practiced by Amazighs in the Nafussa Mountains, Tripoli, and the western coastal town of Zuwara. Amazighs constitute 5 to 10 percent of the Libyan population. Neighboring Tunisia and Algeria also have `Ibadi Muslim residents.

On July 10, the Amazigh Supreme Council, a body representing some Amazigh communities in Libya, decried the edict, as did The Libyan Tmazight Congress. On July 18, more than 200 Libyan writers, academics, activists, politicians, and journalists signed a statement in response to the fatwa, stating they categorically rejected the sectarian religious discourse, which divides Libyans and strives to disseminate hate speech.

Attacks against religious minorities in Libya have gone unpunished since the end of the 2011 uprising against the strongman Muammar Gaddafi. In 2012, armed groups with radical ideologies, attacked religious sites across the country, including in Tripoli, Zliten, and Misrata, destroying several mosques and tombs of Sufi religious leaders and scholars. Authorities at the time failed to stop the attacks and made no arrests. In 2015, an armed group that pledged allegiance to the extremist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS) murdered 21 mostly Egyptian Coptic Christians because of their faith, in the vicinity of the central coastal town of Sirte.

Armed conflict and insecurity have plagued Libya since May 2014, and caused the collapse of central authority and the emergence of three competing governments, including the Interim Government headed by Abdullah Al-Thinni, based in the eastern part of the country. Key institutions, most notably law enforcement and the judiciary, are either dysfunctional or unable to exercise their powers.

Given widespread insecurity across the country and lack of central authority, there is a real risk of persecution and attacks against `Ibadi faith members, who can be easily singled out and targeted, no matter where they are located, Human Rights Watch said. The incendiary edict issued by the religious authority in eastern Libya was in response to a request from an individual in the Nafussa Mountains in western Libya, who asked about the suitability of praying behind a preacher who followed the `Ibadi faith.

The Interim Governments religious authority, the General Authority for Endowments and Islamic Affairs, oversees the Supreme Fatwa Committee as one of its divisions, and pays the salaries of staff and committee members. The Libyan National Army forces under General Khalifa Hiftar and Libyas parliament, the House of Representatives headed by Agilah Saleh, support the Interim Government. The Government of National Accord (GNA), the only internationally recognized and UN-backed authority in Libya, is based in Tripoli.

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Libya: Incitement Against Religious Minority | Human Rights Watch - Human Rights Watch

A member of Libyas Team Impact works on his teams robot during the first day of the FIRST Global Challenge on Monday at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Over the past month, international media have been captivated by the story of a team of six teenage girls from Afghanistan who finally gained entry into the United States for a competition after their visa applications were twice denied. Politico reported on July 12 that Trump prompted the State Department to allow the team into the country. The girls arrived Saturday night in Washington, where they joined 162 other high schoolage teams for the FIRST Global Challenge robotics competition from Sunday to Tuesday. Trumps supporters and skeptics alike have applauded the president for his intervention, and his daughter Ivanka helped kick off the last day of the competition to celebrate women in STEM. Some have argued that the presidents small act of mercy does not excuse the cruelty of the travel ban he instituted.

The ban didnt just make travel nearly impossibleit was also a perpetual obstacle in acquiring funding for the team.

Afghanistan is not one of the six countries covered by the ban. However, the travel ban was a significant stumbling block for the team from Libya. Because of challenges presented by the ban, the Tech Impact team was only able to send two boys, 18-year-old Anis Jorny and 17-year-old Oumer Jehad, to the tournament. The three other team members, along with their adult mentor, were forced to stay behind in Tripoli, the nations capital. Theyve been cheering from a distance by watching a livestream of the games, which involve robots competing to complete tasks like collecting small plastic balls on a rectangular playing field.

The teams mentor and founder, Kusai Fteita, said over Skype, After four months of hard work, its really tough for [the other teammates and me] to just watch this on a screen.

Libya is in the throes of a sovereignty struggle between several militant factions. Since the Arab Spring in 2011, which toppled the reign of Muammar Qaddafi, no governing body has been able to step in and ensure stability. ISIS militants took advantage of the disarray and established a stronghold in Sirte, a coastal city, in 2015. Libyan forces just recently retook the city in December. Tripoli, where the team is based, is roughly 280 miles away.

According to the members of Tech Impact, the ban didnt just make travel nearly impossibleit was also a perpetual obstacle in acquiring funding for the team. Although FIRST will provide robot kits, flight tickets, and accommodations in Washington to those in need, it is up to the teams to pay for their own visa applications. The cost of a visa application is $160 per person, so it would cost almost $1,000 for the five-student team and their mentor. Furthermore, Fteita notes, rapid inflation due to conflict in Libya made it particularly difficult for them to find the money.

We wanted every nation to have some skin in the game, said Joe Sestak, president of FIRST. Teams are usually able to make sponsorship agreements with schools or local businesses that will donate the necessary supplies and money. However, Fteita struggled to convince any businesses in Libya to sponsor the team, largely because of Trumps travel ban.

[The businesses] told me, Because of the Trump ban, you will not get the visas, so why should I give you the money? Fteita recalled. Besides visa fees, sponsors often provide a space to meet and practice, uniforms and banners for the competition, and miscellaneous resources like a stable internet connection for research.

Without donors, the team had to improvise. Through a friend, Fteita was able to find them a meeting place in the cramped side room of a computer shop. The team has been toiling since April to build their robot amid instability in the country. Twice they were forced to stop practice to avoid gunfire from nearby skirmishes. The armed conflict has also crippled Libyas electrical grid, so the shop would often abruptly lose power for up to five hours at a time, leaving them unable to program the robots software. And lack of air conditioning during power outages made working in the shop unbearable, as temperatures in Libya can reach 122 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. But the team developed a system. [During power outages] we work on the [robots] structure and when the electricity returns, we work on the software, Mohammed Zeid, one of the team members, messaged me over Facebook from Tripoli.

They worked long shifts: 10 hours a week in the months leading up to the competition, and five hours a day in the two weeks right before. Some team members had to walk for 45 minutes in the blistering Libyan heat to travel to the computer shop while others took hourlong bus rides.

Shortly before the competition, the team was finally able to find a sponsor willing to take a chance on paying for the visa fees. Yet the sponsor would only pay for the people who had a good shot at getting an application approved under the travel ban. The team decided that Jorny and Jehad were the best candidates, since they had applied successfully for visas the year before the ban was in effect in order to attend exchange programs in the U.S. They boarded a flight to Tunisia to apply at the U.S. embassy (the U.S. does not have an embassy in Libya) and came straight to the competition in D.C. after getting visa approval. The coach and their remaining three teammates17-year-old Zeid, 14-year-old Abdularahman Abu Spiha, and 17-year-old Yaseen Mohamedwere dejected. (Yaseen Mohamed had exams during the competition, so it is unclear whether he would have been able to attend anyway.)

When asked about his reaction to learning that he wouldnt be able to go to the competition, Zeid messaged, Shock! Disappointment! Bad! Frustration! But I always try to remember that I worked for Libya and to improve my country.

On Monday, as the first day of games came to an end in Washington, Jehad and Jorny sat slumped in the corner of the robot repair pit bleary-eyed and overwhelmed. After winning one match and losing another, they had plans to modify their robot, a small metal vehicle that resembles a steampunk wheat combine. A small Libyan flag is posted on the front-right corner of the machine. Not having our mentor here is hard. He usually helps us brainstorm, Jehad said. Also Mohammed [Zeid] has more experience with mechanics so its hard to make the changes without him. Jehad and Jorny had to consult with their mentor and teammates back home through a Facebook chat in order to make the necessary tune-ups for their four upcoming matches the next day.

When asked about the Libyan teams particular challenges, FIRST president Sestak said, We thought there was a fair opportunity for them to [raise funds]. But they were unable to raise funds from sponsors. I was not privy to the reasons, but sponsors were not supporting them already. He noted that the four teams representing other countries affected by the travel ban Sudan, Iran, Yemen, and a team of Syrian refugeeswere nevertheless able to find money for the visa fees. (Somalia was unable to form a team.)

Though teams from other countries affected by the travel ban were indeed able to get their visas, many had similar difficulties finding sponsors and had to pay the fees themselves. The team from Iran also ran into skepticism from potential donors concerning their ability to enter the country under the ban, so they paid for the visa application fees out of pocket. Families of the team members from Sudan paid the fees after initial problems finding sponsors. The mentor for the team of Syrian refugees dipped into his own teaching salary to afford the visas for him and his students, and the students from Yemen received the funds from their local gifted students program. In addition, the team from Gambia, though not technically impacted by the travel ban, initially had its visas denied. The State Department reversed its decision shorty before the competition.

Team Impact ended up winning just one out of its six matches. The result wasnt what the team members had hoped, but now they have their eyes set on the 2018 competition in Mexico City. As the two packed up their robot after the closing ceremonies, Jehad told me, Next year Libya is going to do great. I hope the whole team will be able to make it. Fortunately for them, Mexico doesnt have a travel ban.

This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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How Trump's Travel Ban Hobbled a Libyan High School Robotics Team - Slate Magazine