Lobbies to Ballots: Libya from Diplomacy to Elections

The Policy Center for the New South, The Faculty of Governance, Economics and Social Sciences of the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University and The Middle East Directions Programme are pleased to organize a conference under the theme “Lobbies to Ballots: Libya from Diplomacy to Elections” on Monday, November 22, 2021 starting 15:00 GMT+1.

After years of diplomatic negotiations along multiple tracks in numerous African, Arab and European cities, Libya is headed towards crucial and uncertain elections - the first nationwide electoral process since 2014 - scheduled for the 24th of December.

Whether organising the poll at the foreseen date constitutes a welcome move or not, and whether it would help appease the overall situation in Libya or contribute to a worsening of it, are subjects of heated debates.

The diplomatic activity around the Libyan crisis, which has already been marked by a series of meetings and summits in the past few years, is still punctuated by international events such as bilateral meetings, multilateral summits (e.g. gathering Libya’s neighbours) or major encounters such as the 21st of October Tripoli conference and the 12th of November Paris conference.

At the same time, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) is still watching the different tracks composing the Berlin process, while the Moroccan diplomacy accompanies the “13+13” dialogue format between the House of Representatives (HoR) and the High Council of State (HCS) as per article 15 of the December 2015 Libya Political Agreement (LPA, often referred to as the Skhirat Agreement).

The main institutions inherited from both the LPA and the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF) - HoR, HCS, internationally recognised governments - have also experienced an array of difficulties.

Many have hailed the role played by Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) Ghassan Salamé and praised the energetic actions of his successor, Acting SRSG Stephanie Turco Williams.

However, many observers blame the aforementioned institutions’ deficiencies on the way the Skhirat and Berlin processes were conducted in the first place, and on the people who were selected to take part in the negotiations that led to the formation of the said institutions.

At any rate, the HoR and the HCS have been recently embroiled in a legal clash around the electoral law providing the framework for the coming presidential elections and about the way the law should be adopted.

The clash was amplified by the international reaction concerning the legitimacy of the text adopted by the HoR despite the law’s clear issues; the absence of a constitution also characterises the peculiar context.

In parallel, the Government of National Unity (GNU) has also been enmeshed in a series of institutional conflicts: The HoR withdrew its confidence from the GNU (September 2021), the Minister of Foreign Affairs Najla al-Mangoush was suspended by the Presidential Council (PC, November 2021) in a context of simmering tensions between the PC and Prime Minister Dbaibah, and rampant hostility has deeply impacted relations between the current management of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) and the recently appointed Minister of Oil.

Against this backdrop, many candidates have made their ambitions known – although the candidate list is unfinalised, it also remains unclear what support they can mobilise and how their campaign would be conducted.

Possible difficulties could also emerge from potential spoilers in a context marked by the presence of foreign mercenaries and by a security sector reform (SSR) process that has proved to be extremely complicated in Libya’s different regions.

In that framework, the Policy Center for the New South, the Faculty of Governance, Economic and Social Sciences and the Middle East Directions Program of the European University Institute are pleased to organize a joint conference under the theme “Lobies to Ballots: Libya from Diplomacy to Elections”.

The aim of this event would be to unpack these different topics. Firstly, it would do so by reviewing the different components of the diplomatic activity surrounding Libya in the past few years. Secondly, it would focus on some of the main internal challenges that make the organisation of the coming elections potentially dangerous and premature at this stage.

This conference will take place at The Faculty of Governance, Economics and Social Sciences of the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University.

In accordance with the Moroccan government’s guidelines, kindly note that proof of COVID-19 vaccination -a vaccine pass- is required to access the premises.