Libya's teachers stay out: nationwide strike leaves 1.6 million pupils out of school

Libya's new school year has a start date but no students. Since September 13, when classes for the 2026-27 academic year were due to begin, the country's public schools have stood empty as teachers walked out in a dispute that has grown from sit-ins in Tripoli into an open-ended nationwide strike. Around 1.6 million pupils are out of school. The General Teachers' Union says the teachers will not return on the basis of promises. Tripoli union leader Ashraf Abu Rawi has said that schools will reopen only when the government implements concrete measures — notably the teaching-period allowance and health insurance — and that further escalation remains on the table. A coordination meeting at the Al-Taqaddum Model Basic Education School in central Tripoli brought together union leaders from western and central Libya to plan the next phase, including mass protests outside the interim Government of National Unity's headquarters on Al-Sikka Road in Tripoli. The demands go beyond a pay rise. Teachers want a unified salary scale and wage justice with other public-sector workers, the settlement of salary arrears and financial differences, the teaching-period allowance, allowances for principals, deputies and administrators, and comprehensive health insurance for teachers and their families. Much of it is not new: Law No. 4 of 2018 already regulates the salaries, allowances and benefits of education workers, including healthcare and protection against occupational hazards. The union's complaint is that the law exists on paper while teachers queue behind it in reality. By the union's figures, a public-school teacher earns between 1,000 and 2,500 Libyan dinars a month — roughly $155 to $390 — while food and living costs surge. "These are not demands, but rather rights – and rights have to be taken," said Mustafa Al-Bahilil, head of the teachers' union in Ain Zara on Tripoli's southern outskirts. "They get promises, but all of them are fake promises," said Hamza al-Firjani, a teacher in Tripoli who, like many colleagues, works a second job to survive. In Benghazi, where teachers have joined the strike across the country's east-west divide, union head Mohammed Al-Jahawi said surging prices had left many teachers unable to meet basic needs. The Ministry of Education did not respond to requests for comment. The walkout is the latest upheaval in a country still living with the aftershocks of the 2011 uprising — a summer of power cuts, labour unrest that recently disrupted output at Libya's largest oilfield, and now a generation of children with no classroom to go to. Other unions are threatening to join the teachers. For 1.6 million pupils, the question is no longer when the school year begins, but whether anyone is listening to the people who teach it.