On 19 September, Foreign Policy published an article by Libya-Analysis founder Jason Pack and security analyst Verity Hubbard under the title ‘How Division and Disorder Led to Devastation in Libya’. In their article, Pack and Hubbard analyse the ‘fundamental governance errors’ that exacerbated the Derna flooding catastrophe that left thousands of people dead, missing, or homeless. These governance failures, they argue, include ‘inefficiencies and corruption’ surrounding maintenance allocations, as well as technical failures relating to the dam’s operational capacity. The authors attribute these failures to ‘dysfunction’ in the political system and economy of Libya, where institutional divisions have left ‘no law and order, no enforceable building regulations, an inefficient subsidy system, and hardly any functional emergency services’.
Read the full article here.