An Alternative Path For Libya’s UN-Led Process

Karim Mezran has written an article for the Atlantic Council discussing the UN-led effort to reach an agreement among Libya’s main actors. The article explores an alternative path for the UN-led process, suggesting that it may be more advantageous to hold elections sooner rather than wait eight or nine months for the UN-led action plan to proceed and potentially succumb to a number of spoilers. Mezran suggests:

Going directly to the people to appoint a president and a parliament would bypass all the legal inconsistencies and contradictions around the validity of the HoR and the LPA, creating a single institutional structure that could deal with regional actors and the international community from a much stronger position of legitimacy. It could request international support against spoilers and discourage domestic actors from forcibly taking power. A new government appointed by the new legislature could immediately work to restart the economy and provide much-needed public services—services that would otherwise remain absent in the interim period leading to the National Conference.

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