Libya’s rival political factions have signed a Libya elections roadmap backed by the United Nations. The agreement commits them to holding long-delayed presidential and legislative polls within two years and marks a fresh attempt to reunify the fractured North African nation.
The agreement was signed on Sunday at the offices of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya, known as UNSMIL, in the capital Tripoli. It followed weeks of closed-door negotiations. These talks used a smaller format called the 4+4, bringing together two representatives each from Libya’s four main power centres. They are the Government of National Unity, the High Council of State, the House of Representatives and the Libyan National Army.
Under the terms of the Libya elections roadmap, legislative and presidential elections must be held within a period not exceeding 24 months. They will be run under a single executive authority and unified national institutions. Walid Ellafi, state minister of political affairs and communications in the Government of National Unity, confirmed the timeline shortly after the signing ceremony.
Shibani AbuHamoud, head of the Libyan National Army’s general command, said the 4+4 group would now work with the UN mission. Their task is to build an implementation framework within a month of the signing.
The deal, UNSMIL says, addresses the first two stages of its wider political roadmap. One is the reconstitution of the High National Elections Commission. The other is resolving outstanding disputes over the constitutional and legal framework that will govern the presidential and parliamentary vote.
This latest Libya elections roadmap follows more than a decade of political stalemate. Libya has struggled for stability since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed Muammar Gaddafi. The country split into rival eastern and western administrations in 2014. Large-scale fighting has largely stopped since a 2020 ceasefire, though.
A previous attempt at national elections, scheduled for December 2021, collapsed. Disputes over the eligibility of leading candidates derailed that vote.
Sunday’s agreement carries a built-in safeguard. The House of Representatives and the High Council of State have a month to formally approve the deal. If they fail, negotiators say they will pursue national adoption instead. The roadmap would then become a constitutional document through broader mechanisms, with backing sought from the UN Security Council. That fallback plan shows how fragile this Libya elections roadmap remains, even with signatures already in place.
The signing, Reuters notes, is separate from a parallel diplomatic push led by Massad Boulos. He is a senior adviser to the United States on Arab and African affairs. Boulos has been working to encourage rapprochement between authorities in the east and west of Libya. His initiative sits outside the formal UN-led process that produced this Libya elections roadmap.
Many ordinary Libyans, Reuters reports from Tripoli, remain wary of a vote. They fear it could remove entrenched figures from positions of power built up over more than a decade of division. Earlier UN-backed settlements have also stumbled over control of state institutions and the distribution of Libya’s substantial oil revenue.
Whether this Libya elections roadmap holds where earlier efforts failed is not yet clear. Much depends on ratification by the House of Representatives and High Council of State within the coming month. It will also hinge on how the 4+4 group turns the agreement into a workable electoral framework on the ground.
For now, the signed elections roadmap gives Libya’s rival camps a shared timeline for the first time in years. Whether that shared timeline survives the coming weeks of political horse-trading is the real test.
