“In the eyes of many, it is considered ungrateful, even offensive, for a refugee to criticize the very agency that claims to offer them protection,” writes South Sudanese activist David Yambio. His chapter The Witness Must Speak begins the recently published Book of Shame, one of the most important books of the year.
“A considerable amount of unwritten rules seem to govern the relationship between those who suffer and those who offer aid: the one who gives should not be questioned, and the one who receives must remain thankful, silent, and abiding.”
No longer able to abide, refugees in Libya, Tunisia, and Niger have published a 133–page account of the atrocities they are subjected to, and the maltreatment they have to endure by the institution most assume would be their only hope: the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The UNHCR’s mandate is to protect the rights of refugees and ensure they can find safe and permanent solutions, such as returning home voluntarily, integrating into local communities, or resettling in a third country. Based on over 1,500 testimonies, The Book of Shame explains in horrific detail that the reality on the ground is far from this mission.
“We spoke to Sudanese, Somalis, Eritreans, Nigerians, Malians, Congolese, people from Central Africa, and the list goes on,” Yambio tells OkayAfrica. “They have primarily been stuck in Libya for years, without any durable solution provided to them, and not even assisted by UNHCR.”
No one understands this reality better than Yambio, who is himself a refugee. Originally from South Sudan, he has spent most of his life in displacement across nine African countries.
“I learned almost immediately upon arriving in Libya that I carried a body that could generate thousands of dollars,” he writes. “On the very evening I arrived, I was captured and locked into a warehouse in southern Libya. I was stripped naked, tortured, hung upside down, and starved for weeks.”
Surviving against all odds, but never making it across the Mediterranean, Yambio became a leader in his community in Tripoli because he continued to stand up for others while he himself had nothing. He impressed the UNHCR staff and worked with them to provide healthcare and shelter for as many people as he could.
In October 2021, Gargaresh, a neighborhood in Tripoli that was occupied by over 15,000 refugees and asylum seekers, was violently attacked by militias and armed forces that are affiliated with the Libyan Ministry of Interior.
Official numbers claim that 5,000 people were rounded up and put in detention camps, but the real numbers are likely much higher. “Those of us who survived went to the UNHCR headquarters and knocked on their doors, saying we are here and we need protection,” recalls Yambio. “UNHCR said ‘we have a limited mandate to operate in Libya and we cannot do anything.’”
Yambio felt responsible for the hundreds of women, children, and wounded people living under inhumane conditions, and he could not give up. Instead, the refugees set up a permanent protest outside the UNHCR headquarters for three months and 10 days.
“UNHCR framed us as troublemakers and denied us being asylum seekers and refugees. They invited the Libyan authorities who threatened us. In January 2022, they came again in the middle of the night and swiped the entire garrison where we were camping,” says Yambio.
As a response, he co-founded the UNFAIR campaign because “UNHCR literally abandoned us,” he says. “We were 5,000 people, forced to be in the street without any access to toilets or sanitation.”
In the same year, he travelled to Geneva and tried taking UNHCR to court. “We have tried different avenues to hold them accountable, but they seem to flee away every time,” he says. The Book of Shame is yet another attempt.
Compiling the testimonies through a hotline on Yambio’s phone was traumatic. “I used to receive nearly 200 messages a day, mostly from people who had been abducted at sea at gunpoint and locked into detention camps across Libya, or women being raped, or those who just want food or to access UNHCR,” he says.
These calls were turned into The Book of Shame, a collective voice of those who are being silenced. “Nobody has allowed us to speak,” says Yambio. “The state does not bring us to the table where they make decisions about our individual lives. The UNHCR, International Organization for Migration (IOM), and European Union (EU) do the same. They never consider us as relevant entities that they could consult.”
“IOM is always conspiring to have people locked up, so they can resort to so-called voluntary return,” he continues.
The book aims to nudge people towards a more critical view of migration. For too long, many Westerners have bought into the idea that a person in need should not question those who help — even if this help keeps them in a perpetual state of dependence. Yambio wants people to look further and ask: “Why are these people in need [in the first place]?”
The answers will be found on their own side of the divide that, in this case, is the Mediterranean Sea. “I didn’t only leave my country because South Sudan and Sudan were fighting,” he says. “The West was always behind this, arming violent men and extracting our resources.”
UNHCR was founded in the aftermath of World War II to assist displaced Europeans; it was never intended for Africans, but now it has to change and genuinely work with them.
“You can see the real hypocrisy with Africans in Europe living under bridges while Ukrainians are automatically dissolved into society,” says Yambio. In Africa, he views UNHCR’s strategy as a containment system, rather than a genuine attempt to care for vulnerable populations.
“We are not calling for UNHCR to be disbanded, but for UNHCR to meet its mandate,” he clarifies. “And for them to denounce what the state is doing, which is to enforce violence against refugees.”
As of now, UNHCR merely tempts vulnerable people with resettlement to third countries in the West, even though most will never be seriously considered and find themselves in an endless bureaucratic system.
The Book of Shame was published on September 22, 2025, and it is being distributed through civil society organizations and Yambio’s activism. “International media want to tell horrible stories of people drowning in the Mediterranean, but when we claim our own agency, they respond, ‘We need time,’ but nothing ever happens,” says Yambio.
“We need UNHCR and IOM staff to read this book and understand the consequences of their work. And we want world citizens to think critically and question why people are in Libya, depending on UNHCR in the first place.”
