In mid-December, the Qadhafi International Charity and Development Foundation (QICDF), a civil society organisation owned by Saif al-Islam Qadhafi, the son of the Libyan leader, Muammar Qadhafi, published its second annual report on human rights in Libya. In summation, the report stated that there was "significant progress on some issues and new failures on others", adding that it "regretted a dangerous regression" in the treatment of civil society associations, accusing the General People's Congress (GPC, akin to a parliament), of "intervening directly in the affairs of unions and professional associations".

It also criticised the government's suppression of press freedoms, urging the government to "review media policy in Libya, to lift its stranglehold on the media" and to provide the legislative framework for the development of private media in the country. The report expressed "regret" over the action taken against the news agency, Libya Press, and Oea, a local newspaper owned by Saif al-Islam, in November, when 20 journalists were arrested (December 2010, The Political scene).

The report also complained about the ongoing operations of the State Security Court, which had been slated for abolition a number of years. It stated that its continuing existence was a "shortcoming" that undermined the rule of law in the country.

More positively, the report welcomed the release of dozens of Islamists from prison in recent months, but lamented the lack of progress in the investigation into the 1996 massacre at the Abu Salim prison in the capital, Tripoli, where 1,200 prisoners were killed. The government announced the establishment of a committee to investigate the affair in 2009 and has offered families of the victims compensation, providing they renounce their rights to judicial redress. The report urged the authorities to engage in direct dialogue with the families of victims to "restore trust in state institutions".

The publication of the QICDF report came just one week before Amnesty International, a global human rights watchdog, issued a report on the refugee situation in Libya. The Amnesty publication criticises Libya for "indefinite detention, torture and other abuses" that it claims await refugees if they end up in the country. It also condemned Libya for failing to ratify the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol and its refusal to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. Libya insists that it does not have refugees, only "irregular migrants".

The timing of the QICDF report was questioned in some quarters as having deliberately been released in order to deflect from the critical nature of the subsequent Amnesty publication. Certainly, the QICDF report was not as censorious as it had been the previous year. While being broadly critical, it also suggested that there had been "significant progress on some issues", but failed to substantiate this claim.