By Edward Fox
The ideology of the Libyan state under the dictator al-Qadhafi discouraged the study of the country’s ancient past. Read More
Author - ab_mnbr
Suicide and murder are rising fast in the Middle East and nearby regions that are already grappling with war and conflict, creating a “lost generation,” researchers have found. Read More
By Wolfram Lacher
The 17th February Revolution has fundamentally reshaped Libya’s political landscape. Read More
By Jamie Dettmer
The thick-set 23-year-old Nigerian woman exudes strength, keen to overcome what she suffered in Libya and Italy before she escaped from the shadows in Rome and jumped on a train heading for Ancona on Italy’s Adriatic coast. Read More
Intense and earnest coordination between Libya’s neighboring states, particularly Egypt and Algeria as the two most influential, is the key to limit the growth of affiliate militants of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in Libya after their ongoing decline in Syria and Iraq. Read More
By Nadine Dahan
Residents of the eastern city of Derna are facing critical shortages as military strongman Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) tightened their longstanding siege of the city. Read More
The UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Libya, Maria Ribeiro, has expressed concerns over reports of severe shortages of basic necessities, including life saving medical supplies due to the siege laid on Derna in east Libya by the forces of Khalifa Haftar-led Operation Dignity. Read More
By Maria Antonietta Calabrò
The Libyan general’s spokesman: “We will prevent the entry of foreign ships.” But for our intelligence the real goal is Sarraj. Read More
By Ramadan Al Sherbini
Al Sarraj flayed over deal on deployment of Italian vessels to battle illegal migration. Read More
By Noel Daniel Vig
In December of 2015 the United Nations in agreement with the Security Council’s members recognised the Government of National Accord (GNA) as the legitimate State of Libya. Read More
To piece this country back together and end its role in terrorism and migration to Europe, the United Nations has sent an envoy to listen to Libyans who want to reconcile. Read More
By Arezki Daoud
Two Libyan leaders, UN-backed, Tripoli-based Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj and the self-promoted Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the man whose stronghold is in the east of the country, met in Paris this week under the watchful eye of new French President Emmanuel Macron. Read More
By John Pearson
Ghassan Salame, a Lebanese academic and former culture minister, is hoping to persuade Libyan factions to accept the Joint Declaration. Read More
By Alison Pargeter
This report by Libya specialist Alison Pargeter elicits Libyan views on international operations in Libya and analyses the possible effects of such operations on Libya’s longer-term stability. Read More
By Richard Silverstein
A well-informed Israeli source – who requested anonymity, considering the matter is censored by the Israeli military – tells me that the IDF has bombed Islamic State military positions (Google translation) in Libya on behalf of strongman General Khalifa Haftar. Read More
By Wolfram Lacher
The 17th February Revolution has fundamentally reshaped Libya’s political landscape. Read More
By Esther King
Centers holding thousands of migrants are cramped, barren and dirty, according to a report by EU officials. Read More
On July 29, forty-three members among a sixty-member Constituent Assembly in Libya, voted in support of the Libyan constitution draft. Read More
By Federica Saini Fasanotti
Many in the international community cheered the latest apparent breakthrough in mediating the ongoing conflict in Libya. Read More
French bank Societe Generale on Wednesday said its net profit tumbled by over a quarter in the second quarter of this year due to the cost of settling a lawsuit with Libya’s sovereign wealth fund.
By Alastair Sloan
There is an increasing focus on the suffering of women in wartime. Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) under former Conservative leader William Hague MP had an admirable partnership with the activist-actress Angelina Jolie, dedicated solely to highlighting women’s suffering in war zones around the world and, indeed, since the beginning of time. Read More
By Emily Estelle
A strategy that backs Haftar will not lead to good governance.A strategy that backs Haftar will not lead to good governance. It is a tempting shortcut that will ultimately harm American interests. Read More
The principal gateway into Europe for refugees and migrants runs through the power vacuum of southern Libya’s Fezzan region.
Any effort by European policymakers to stabilise Fezzan must be part of a national-level strategy aimed at developing Libya’s licit economy and reaching political normalisation.
To read the full report click (how-libyas-fezzan-became-europes-new-border )
Executive Summary
European policymakers increasingly are looking at the Fezzan, Libya’s vast and scarcely populated south west, as their frontier against sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees traveling the Central Mediterranean route to Europe.
In 2016, over 160,000 took this route from Libya on makeshift boats; most had entered through this region, which connects the country’s southern border with its coast.
Several European countries, chiefly Italy, hope that stabilising the situation in the Fezzan and reviving its economy will help curb migrant flows. The idea has merit, but this will be no easy task and cannot succeed without also addressing the broader crises gripping the country.
Any European effort to address governance, economic and security problems in the Fezzan should be coordinated with the internationally recognised government and linked to wider, nationwide initiatives to tackle issues that plague the country as a whole.
The Fezzan suffers from multiple problems, most of which are not of its own making. The region’s licit economy is depressed, but the national economic and financial institutions that could help revive it are largely paralysed. By contrast, the illicit economy is booming.
The Fezzan sits at a regional crossroads, linking southern Libya to the Sahel and sub-Saharan migrant routes to northern Libya and onto Europe.
While the region is richly endowed with natural resources, it suffers from the absence of a central authority able to impose order. Incentives for smuggling of all types – people, oil, gold, weapons, drugs – far outstrip those for making money through legal means. Ethnic and tribal tensions, magnified by the political vacuum and economic competition, have been exploited by rival factions competing to control the country.
External forces – regional powers, foreign mercenaries and transnational jihadist groups – have also meddled, joining local conflicts or using the south as a transit zone. Stabilising the Fezzan in the midst of such a storm will be difficult, but it has been neglected far too long, to the detriment of its residents, its neighbours and Europe alike.
The ongoing fight between Libya’s rival military coalitions is perhaps the biggest challenge.
The UN-backed Presidency Council and its Government of National Accord (GNA), headed by Prime Minister Faiez Serraj in Tripoli, has little standing and few local allies in the Fezzan.
By contrast, factions aligned with General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) and the eastern government based in al-Bayda enjoy greater influence, as do factions that oppose both Haftar and Serraj.
Deadly fighting between these various forces has increased since early 2017 and covert foreign military support to them seems likely to rise.
The spread of these national rivalries into the south has been accelerated by tensions among tribes, which have fought five successive local wars since 2011.
Despite ceasefires, the risk of further escalation remains high, in part because of the failure to deliver material compensation promised during past negotiations as well as delays implementing reconstruction plans.
Stabilising the Fezzan is urgent, and not just to constrain migration. Without addressing the governance, economic and security issues in the south, Libya’s broader political and military normalisation will be impossible.
While this requires long-term investments, Libyan authorities and European governments can take immediate steps to smooth relations among southern tribes and improve living conditions – measures that, in due course, could reduce the incentive for people smuggling.
For instance, foreign donors could work with Libya’s recognised government to energise agricultural projects in the south that have fallen into disrepair.
Oil companies operating in the Fezzan and Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) also have their share of responsibility; they should seek to increase local employment and invest more in local social development projects.
A more inclusive dialogue focusing on security is also needed. Efforts to gather representatives of different communities around a table to date have included mainly tribal leaders and civil society activists. That is not enough.
Talks should include military commanders and the leaders of local armed groups in a first step toward a nationwide security dialogue. As elsewhere in Libya, the question of how to structure and staff legitimate and genuinely national security forces, from army to police to border guards, is central.
Some outsiders, especially some European states, might be tempted to circumvent such a dialogue in search of a quicker military solution. That would be ill-advised: any attempt to impose a solution through military force alone would likely fuel further instability.
In particular, recruiting local strongmen or cultivating alliances with specific militias risks exacerbating pre-existing conflicts. Moreover, the enormous profits derived from the black market almost certainly would surpass whatever cash outsiders can dole out to purchase loyalty.
Finally, none of these steps will have lasting effect unless and until there is greater alignment among international stakeholders. Within Europe, this requires greater cooperation between France and Italy, the two EU countries that, each for its own reasons, are focused on the Fezzan. Similarly, the EU, the U.S. and other countries should seek to lower tensions among Gulf Arab states or at least limit their impact on Libya at a time when Egypt and the United Arab Emirates are backing Haftar while Qatar and Turkey support his rivals.
Overall, Libya’s neighbours, regional leaders further afield and international powers should make greater efforts to converge on a shared set of principles to address a Libyan peace process that is increasingly adrift, rather than narrowly prioritise their immediate interests.
In the Fezzan as elsewhere in Libya, this would serve at least to avoid worsening an already bad situation and provide guidelines for restoring some semblance of a state – a goal that ultimately all should see as being in the country’s, as well as the region’s, best interests.
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The Interim Government of the House of Representatives (HoR) that led by Abdulla Al-Thinni who decided to close the Sudanese Consulate in the city of Al-Kufra, south east Libya, renews the crisis between Sudan and the Interim Government. Read More
By Sudarsan Raghavan
The line at the bank was two blocks long and Abdul bin Naji was once again praying for the doors to open. He desperately needed his $60. Read More
By Emily Estelle
The Trump administration may yield to the temptation to back a would-be strongman, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, ostentatiously committed to the destruction of political Islamism. Read More
By Mattia Toaldo
Europe must use its diplomatic leverage to ensure that increased Russian involvement does not come at the cost of further destabilisation on Europe’s southern border. Read More
By Iffat Idris
The report is a publication of the Department for International Development, Published on 12 Jan 2017.
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The literature on gender equality, development and security suggests that sustainable peace and successful long-term development are linked to gender equality policies (Selimovic & Larsson, 2014: 5).
UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (SCR 1325), approved in 2000, reaffirms the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace-building, and in postconflict reconstruction.
It calls for equal participation of women in decision-making related to peace processes, protection of women from violence, in particular sexual violence in armed conflict situations, and gender mainstreaming in conflict management and peace building efforts.
SCR 1325 was ‘the Security Council’s first resolution that recognised the specific risks to and experiences of women in armed conflict and women’s central role in maintaining international peace and security’ (HRW, 2015: 4).
A series of subsequent Security Council resolutions have reinforced the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda laid out in SCR 1325: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013)2 and 2242 (2015).
Despite growing international recognition of SCR 1325 as a global norm, on the ground implementation has been slow and arduous. Issues include lack of funding for grassroots women’s organisations, and challenges evaluating implementation such as lack of timely and disaggregated data (HRW, 2015: 5).
Moreover, ‘gender rights tend to be moved down the list of priorities in precarious transitions from war to peace – by international as well as national stakeholders’ (Selimovic & Larsson, 2014: 5). This has certainly been the case in Libya.
Over five years since the 2011 revolution, Libya remains far from reaching a consensus political settlement, or indeed even establishing a stable interim arrangement (Idris, 2016). There are currently three governments laying claim to power: the General National Congress (GNC) and Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli, and the House of Representatives (HoR) in the east (Freedom House, 2016).
The country is deeply divided along political, geographic, religious and ethnic lines. There are numerous armed groups engaged in local, regional and national conflicts. Implementation of SCR 1325 and associated WPS resolutions in such a context is extremely challenging.
Key findings are as follows:
- Active role of women in Libyan revolution: Women played a leading role in the buildup to the Libyan revolution. Whilst generally not directly involved in fighting they contributed in many other ways, e.g. smuggling weapons, supplying food and medicines (Hammer, 2012). The expectation was that the revolution would lead to empowerment of women in Libya (Hilsum, 2014a).
- Post-revolution marginalisation of women in politics: Women found themselves being side-lined as new government bodies were set up. Intensive advocacy was needed to ensure women’s representation in the General National Congress (GNC), but the quota for women was subsequently dropped to 10 percent in the critical Constitution Drafting Assembly (CDA) (ICAN, 2013; CNTJ & NPWJ, 2014). Obstacles to women’s political participation include patriarchal cultural attitudes and rising conservatism, threats and attacks on women in politics, and limited international support (ICAN, 2013; IFES, 2013; Selimovic & Larsson, 2014; UNDP, 2015).
- Negligible participation of women in national peace processes: Women have similarly been involved to a very limited extent in national (including UN-led) peace processes, though they have shown the potential to play an important role in local mediation and reconciliation (Selimovic & Larsson, 2014).
- Conflict-related sexual violence and lack of accountability: Sexual-related violence was widespread during the revolution, directed against men as well as women, and perpetrated not just by the regime but also rebels (CNTJ & NPWJ, 2014; ICAN, 2013). Accountability and securing justice for victims is made extremely difficult by the huge social stigma attached to rape, as well as issues like lack of forensic evidence. The GNC did draft a law recognising rape as a war crime and providing for reparations for victims, but this has not yet been approved (CNTJ & NPWJ, 2014; Selimovic & Larsson, 2014).
- Ongoing conflict and insecurity leading to greater restrictions on women: Sustained insecurity in Libya is increasingly restricting women’s access to the public sphere, in particular because families see the need to protect them and thereby safeguard family honour (IFES, 2013; ICAN, 2013). Domestic violence is thought to be more prevalent and more intense since the revolution, largely because of small arms proliferation in Libyan society (Khalifah, 2015).
- Limited participation of women in security and justice sector: Women have very limited representation in armed forces, the police and other security services. This is because of patriarchal cultural attitudes, ongoing insecurity, and Gaddafi’s policy of using female guards – widely seen as ‘sex slaves’ – and the resulting negative view of women in the security sector (ICAN, 2013; UNDP, 2015). Women have also been excluded from international initiatives for security sector reform (ICAN, 2013).
- Nominal support of international community for WPS in Libya: Despite commitments to implementing SCR 1325 and associated resolutions in Libya, the international community has a tendency to shy away from pushing for women’s rights in the face of local opposition. Critics argue that ignoring gender equality will make it difficult to achieve sustained peace (Selimovic & Larsson, 2014).
While the revolution carried the potential to bring about meaningful empowerment of women, in practice women face strong opposition from both traditionalists holding patriarchal attitudes and Islamists. This is leading some to question if the situation of women in Libya has improved since Gaddafi’s ouster or deteriorated (Hilsum, 2014b; Selimovic & Larsson, 2014; Salah, 2014).
The K4D helpdesk service provides brief summaries of current research, evidence, and lessons learned. Helpdesk reports are not rigorous or systematic reviews; they are intended to provide an introduction to the most important evidence related to a research question. They draw on a rapid desk-based review of published literature and consultation with subject specialists.
Helpdesk reports are commissioned by the UK Department for International Development and other Government departments, but the views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of DFID, the UK Government, K4D or any other contributing organisation.
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Iffat Idris, University of Birmingham
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By Farida Waleed
“Tripoli is safe,,, and you can visit it. I invite you to evaluate it by yourself.” Read More
By Manlio Dinucci
“What is happening today in Libya is the nub of a destabilization programme holding a myriad of complexities”. So declared President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee, as he concluded an agreement that “paves the way for peace and national reconciliation”. Read More
It long seemed as if Khalifa Haftar would not stop fighting until the forces under his command controlled all of Libya. Read More
By Hadeel Elaradi
On May 25, a Libyan coastguard unit opened fire on Europe-bound boats full of refugees while rescue attempts were under way. Read More
France will start processing asylum seekers’ applications in Libya as of this summer as part of measures to prevent illegal migrants from making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean. Read More
Set to arrive in Libya next week, the new United Nations Special Representative said that he was coming to Tripoli to work with the Libyans, in an attempt to help find a solution out of the political crisis that led to the fall of Gaddafi in 2011 and pushed the country into a crisis that sees thousands of migrants and refugees fleeing to Europe and other countries in Africa. Read More
Talks have secured a joint declaration on the country’s future. Now the hard work begins. Read More
Interview by Sophie Shevardnadze
Zahra’ Langhi – the co-founder of the Libyan Women’s Platform for Peace, who fought for women’s rights after the Libyan revolution. Read More