This paper focuses on Libya as a country of immigration and emigration. The first part of this work describes migration flows between Libya and the rest of the world, based on official un data from 1990 to today. In the second part, the paper provides estimates of the number of Italian immigrants in Libya in the past and in the present; the historical data are retrieved from the Italian 1921 and 1931 censuses, while the current ones are based on official data from the Registry of Italians Resident Abroad (AIRE) and the un. Finally, Libyan migrants in Italy are estimated by comparing un data with data from the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT).