Libya's sidelined IDPs
Tawergha children in an IDP camp near Tripoli airport in Libya. Some 35,000 Tawergha IDPs who fled their homes during the 2011 revolution remain displaced.
The grandmother, who is aged somewhere between 60 and 65 - she is not quite sure - has lived in a displacement camp near Tripoli Airport for three years.
The Tawergha minority, darker skinned due to their ancestral links to slaves brought to the country in the 18th and 19th centuries, have long faced discrimination in Libya, but this has intensified in recent years and they were accused of siding with the Gaddafi regime during his overthrow in 2011.
The ousted dictator used the town of Tawergha, about 40km south of Misrata, as a military base during his resistance, but in August 2011, Misrata militias entered the town and burnt it to the ground, causing 42,000 Tawerghans to flee.
Three years on, an estimated 35,000 of those IDPs are still sheltering in temporary camps in Tripoli and Benghazi, according to local agencies.
They claim they have been neglected both by the international aid community and the various factions that now make up Libya's parallel governments.
"Last year, the UN Refugee Agency brought us nylon tents, kitchen kits and heaters. But this year we have received nothing from any organizations," said Mabruk Eswesi, the chairman of Al-Saber Association, made up of Tawergha volunteers living in IDP camps.
"We are facing difficult times with political and humanitarian issues," he added.
"We are afraid of the new government supported by Fajr Libya," explained Issa, an IDP in his early twenties, referring to the authority now in control in the capital. "If we go to downtown they could arrest us just because we are black and from Tawergha," he said.
"If we go todowntown, they could arrest us just because we are black and from Tawergha"
Read more:
Libya's sidelined IDPs