Libyan teachers’ strike escalates as union demands major education reforms

Teachers successful Libya person escalated their protests implicit salaries into an open-ended onslaught astatine nationalist schools.

Protests began connected September 13, the time the schoolhouse twelvemonth was owed to start. Sit-ins were held extracurricular schools and authorities buildings successful the capital, Tripoli.

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Two weeks later, Libya’s teachers national stepped up the run with a nationwide strike. It has kept students retired of classrooms crossed the country.

On Sunday, respective Libyan unions representing different sectors threatened to articulation the onslaught unless the authorities entered talks to code a cost of surviving crisis.

Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah of the internationally recognised Government of National Unity (GNU) successful Tripoli met with furniture members to sermon a effect to this crisis.

Libya has struggled with economical and governmental instability since a 2011 uprising ended the regularisation of precocious Libyan person Muammar Gaddafi.

The strikes are occurring connected some sides of Libya’s governmental divide: its occidental region, governed by the GNU, and its eastbound region, which is nether the power of renegade subject commandant Khalifa Haftar’s self-described Libyan National Army.

In April, the rival legislative bodies of some sides agreed a unified budget for the archetypal time.

Here’s what we cognize astir the dispute:

What are teachers demanding?

Teachers said they are facing declining salaries, unpaid arrears, insufficient benefits and deteriorating schoolhouse conditions.

They demanded an contiguous halt to what they called the “erosion of workers’ incomes”, citing deteriorating economical and surviving conditions.

Principal Muftah Khalifa told Al Jazeera Arabic that teachers were protesting against the government’s nonaccomplishment to respond to their repeated demands for higher and unified wages, wellness security and extortion connected and disconnected schoolhouse premises.

Teachers told the Reuters quality bureau they look problems ranging from a deficiency of machine labs to desks being excessively dilapidated to use. Staff and parents often person to wage for instrumentality themselves.

A cardinal request is the adoption of a unified wage strategy that would equilibrium a ample disparity successful wage betwixt workers successful antithetic sectors. It is simply a telephone that different unions person present rallied behind.

Libya’s unions said connected Sunday that the strategy should instrumentality into relationship changes successful the outgo of surviving and the fluctuating dinar-US dollar speech rate. Retirees person besides called for the implementation of erstwhile agreements connected pensioners.

The unions said nary “arbitrary oregon punitive” measures should beryllium taken against workers, retirees oregon national leaders implicit their activities. They besides called connected Libya’s lawyer wide to enactment rapidly against immoderate corruption concerning nationalist spending.

Young radical play shot during a teachers onslaught and schoolhouse closures successful Benghazi, Libya, connected September 27, 2026 [Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters]

What does the existent instrumentality say?

According to an acquisition fund little prepared by Libya’s National Council for Economic and Social Development with UNICEF, 91 percent of the acquisition fund goes to salaries and the remainder to schoolhouse costs, specified arsenic equipment.

The acquisition assemblage had 560,000 employees successful 2024, including astir 270,000 teachers successful basal and secondary education, a immense fig for a state with a colonisation of astir 7.5 cardinal people.

In 2018, the GNU passed Law No 4 to modulate the salaries, allowances and benefits of these workers.

It besides provides for wellness and societal care, security against unwellness and occupational hazards, and extortion for teachers and their families.

In September 2021, the GNU ordered wage rises successful enactment with this law, but it did not resoluteness the contented of wage arrears.

Teachers show to request higher salaries and amended moving conditions astatine a schoolhouse successful Tripoli connected September 29, 2026 [Mahmud Turkia/AFP]

How did the quality escalate?

Thursday’s onslaught announcement came aft national chiefs and teachers’ representatives from occidental Libya withdrew from a gathering called by the Ministry of Education.

Ashraf Abu Rawi, caput of the Tripoli teachers union, told Al Jazeera that the unions felt authorities had not taken the teachers’ demands seriously.

The teachers national has warned the Ministry of Education against reopening schools, saying specified a determination would lone pb to further escalation.

The authorities has said the teachers’ demands are morganatic but the rights of students should besides beryllium considered.

Osama Abboud, a genitor of 2 pupils, said the teachers’ demands were morganatic and parents backed them. But helium besides urged teachers to deliberation of their students’ aboriginal and proceed moving without abandoning their demands.

Dbeibah’s gathering connected Sunday with Finance Minister Rashid Boughofa and different elder officials focused connected a connection of a unified wage strategy to screen each sectors and authorities institutions.

But raising teachers’ wage would necessitate a authorities decision, parliamentary support and banking procedures. All of this would instrumentality time, fixed the legislative schism that has plagued Libya for years, according to Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Khalifa, reporting from Tripoli.