By Zaid Al-Ali and Sumit Bisarya
U.N. Special Representative for Libya Ghassan Salame indicated in a statement to the Security Council that a national conference should be convened at the start of 2019 to “create a space for Libyans to crystallize their vision for the transition and no longer be ignored by their politicians.” Read More
By Fehim Tastekin
Although some perceive Turkey’s walking out of the Palermo conference as stepping back from the Libya process, it doesn’t mean that Turkey is giving up its struggle for influence. Read More
By Rachel Kleinfeld
The world’s most violent places aren’t at war. They are polarized, unequal democracies. Here’s how to make them safer. Read More
By Sinem Cengiz
This week, Italy hosted a conference aimed at helping war-torn Libya to establish peace and stability. Read More
By Giovanna De Maio
Little progress has been made in Libya’s situation—security, political, economic—in the almost eight years since the overthrow of Colonel Moammar Gadhafi’s regime. Read More
By Hafed Al-Ghwell
An unmistakable sense of despair and gloom accompanies most news reports and literature on the state of affairs in Libya after 2011. Read More
By Grigory Lukyanov
The International Conference on Libya, which recently ended in Palermo, was the first political initiative of the new rightwing populist government of Giuseppe Conti. Read More
By Francesca Mannocchi
A Tripoli militia took advantage of a political conference in Palermo to allow Libyans to withdraw ten times the usual amount of money. Read More
The Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) said on Sunday that it has received the interest payments on the Libyan funds frozen in Belgian banks until the end of October 2017, but said it did not know who benefitted from this money, hinting that the money was either misused in Libya or embezzled. Read More
By Sam Hamad
The Libya conference set up in Palermo Italy was a non-starter. It managed to achieve little more than showing that the European powers involved in Libya are a massive part of the rut that the country is stuck in. Read More
By Alison Pargeter
The country’s conflict has become so intractable that it would take a near-miracle to facilitate a comprehensive and meaningful peace. Read More
Maxim A. Suchkov
Over the last few weeks, apart from the usual Syrian track, Libya has dominated Russia’s Middle Eastern agenda. Read More
By: Paul Goble
Moscow is deepening its military involvement in Libya while denying to its own people and the world that it is doing so, thus repeating the pattern that the Kremlin has followed in Syria and the Central African Republic. Read More
By Ulf Laessing & Ayat Basma
The U.N. envoy for Libya hopes another attempt to hold an election will take place by June after he scrapped a December plan, but said Libyans should first use a national conference in early 2019 to decide on the poll’s format. Read More
By Barbara Bibbo
UN envoy Ghassan Salame says renegade General Khalifa Haftar ‘committed to support’ elections in the spring of 2019. Read More
By Edith Lederer
Conflict-wracked Libya is caught in a destructive cycle “fueled by personal ambition and the nation’s stolen wealth” — and the way forward begins with a National Conference in early 2019, the U.N. envoy said Thursday. Read More
By Thomas Hill & Emily Estelle
Italy hosted an international conference intended to finally bring Libya’s bloody seven-year conflict toward resolution. Read More
Diplomats try to salvage conference aimed at cementing Italy’s role as power broker.
By Lorenzo Tondo and Patrick Wintour
Italian diplomats have scrambled to inject momentum into a high-profile summit on the future of Libya which has opened in disarray. Read More
By Karim Mezran & Erin A. Neale
Key Libyan and international stakeholders will meet in Palermo, Italy, on November 12 to discuss and, hypothetically, draft a plan to deal with the political crisis in Libya. Read More
By Kirill Semenov
On Nov. 7, the chief commander of the so-called Libyan National Army (LNA), Khalifa Hifter, who also represents the government in Tobruk, visited Moscow for a meeting with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Read More
By Paolo Santalucia
Representatives of Libya’s quarrelling factions and of countries keen on stabilizing the North African nation started meetings in Sicily on Monday. Read More
Libya has been mired in chaos since the ouster and killing of Gaddafi the dictator in 2011, with two rival authorities and a multitude of militias still vying for control of the oil-rich country. Read More
In his latest brief on Libya to the UN Security Council yesterday, SRSG and UNSMIL head, Ghassan Salame, officially abandoned any attempt to hold Libyan elections in December this year. Read More
Statement by Stephen Hickey, UK Political Coordinator at the UN, at the Security Council briefing on Libya
Thank you Mr President, and let me begin by thanking SRSG Salamé for his briefing and by reiterating the UK’s strong support for him and the work of all his team on the ground. Read More
Italy will host a peace conference that is mostly about France
FOR ONCE Italy’s populist government will be pleased to see a group of Africans cross the Mediterranean. On November 12th the leaders of Libya’s warring factions will gather in Palermo, the capital of Sicily, for a two-day peace conference. Read More
By Nicola Pedde
The approaching conference on Libyan stabilization hosted by Italy—which will be held on November 12 and 13 in Palermo—will bring together the main Libyan leaders, with the purpose of defining their respective negotiation platforms in advance. Read More
By Clive Stafford Smith
The Libyan – whose false intelligence extracted under torture was used to make the case for war in Iraq – was an embarrassment to powerful people, and Gaddafi was willing to make him disappear. Read More
By Alejandro de la Garza
Behind every world conflict are individual stories of human suffering and dignity. For legendary Sunday Times foreign correspondent Marie Colvin, few places were too dangerous to search those stories out. Read More
By Sami Zaptia
Six young Libyan startups, two of them run by women, today won grants totalling LD 400,000 to support their projects. Read More
By Claudia Gazzini
Despite the obvious tie between the economy and Libya’s general decline, efforts to address the conflict’s economic aspects have often taken a back seat to political and security measures. Read More
By Przemysław Osiewicz
The most recent EU summit, in June 2018, only proved that the EU’s member states do not share any common long-term perspective on migration from the Middle East to Europe. Read More
Jonathan M. Winer
In the summer of 2014, Libya lost most of its foreign diplomats, who departed after weeks of fighting between militias for control of key infrastructure in Tripoli. Read More
Transformations from Armed to unarmed Political Activism
The upcoming symposium “From Bullets to Ballots: Transformations from Armed to unarmed Political Activism” held by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies will take place on 3-4 November 2018, in Doha. Read More
On November 1, 2018, Arab Center Washington DC hosted a panel discussion on Libya’s political prospects and the potential for democratic transition, seven years after rebels killed long-time dictator Muammar Qadhafi in his hometown of Sirte. Read More
The Benghazi Trauma and its Aftermath
By Ethan Chorin
Reveals how an attack on a US mission affected Washington so profoundly that it lost its bearings in the Arab world. Read More
And How the Palermo Conference Can Help
By Federica Saini Fasanotti & Ben Fishman
Since the 2011 revolution against Qaddafi, Libyans have often blamed outside actors for their continuing woes. Read More