Why can’t the UN really stabilise Libya?

The United Nations remains the most visible international actor in Libya’s political process but visibility should not be confused with effective control as after years of dialogue, statements, committees and diplomatic missions, Libya is still divided between rival institutions, armed networks, external sponsors and competing claims to legitimacy.

The problem is no longer whether the UN can propose a settlement but whether the UN has the authority, leverage or even enforcement power to make any settlement real.

This is the central contradiction of the Libyan division, the UN is expected to stabilise a country that cannot control.

It can draft language, organise dialogue and appeal to national responsibility but it cannot impose sovereignty on actors who use sovereignty mainly as a slogan while refusing the obligations that come with it.

While the UN may still be necessary because the Libyan political class has not been able to resolve the crisis alone, it is also insufficient as it cannot compel the same political class to accept outcomes that threaten its own survival.

This is why Libya’s process has repeatedly produced motion without resolution, as participants reaffirm commitment to elections, unity and reconciliation while proposing new roadmaps and guideline, but the real balance of power inside the country changes much more slowly.

Armed forces remain divided, State institutions remain contested, foreign governments maintain separate relationships with different Libyan actors.

That makes the UN’s position structurally weak, its authority depends on consent but many of the actors whose consent is required benefit from the absence of final settlement.

The House of Representatives, the High Council of State, rival executives, eastern authorities and western armed groups all claims their legitimacy, each claims to defend the national interest, each insists that it wants elections under the right conditions. Yet they also protects procedural vetoes, institutional privileges and security arrangements that prevent a clean break from this stall.

This is not accidental, it is clear that Libya’s uncertainty has become a political economy.

Delay produces access to money, ministries, contracts, armed influence and foreign relationships with the correlated powers, an election might renew legitimacy but it might also remove those who currently benefit.

This is why UN cannot change this pattern with its current powers as a mission without any measure of coercive power must rely on persuasion, international pressure and the threat of reputational cost.

In Libya, those tools are too weak, political actors who obstruct one track can look for another influential sponsor as different foreign governments had publicly supported the UN while privately strengthened their preferred partners.

This is where sovereignty becomes both the solution and the obstacle.

In principle, the UN is right to insist that Libya’s process must be Libyan led with no external actor that can create an acceptable and durable legitimacy for a country still struggling to define its own political order.

A settlement imposed from outside would be vulnerable from the beginning, because any faction excluded from it could denounce it as foreign interference.

The result is a deeply unstable form of sovereignty, Libya is sovereign enough for institutions to reject formal international pressure but not sovereign enough to prevent foreign powers from shaping the substantial reality.

This contradiction has weakened the UN’s role, when the mission tries to widen participation beyond the established political bodies it is accused of bypassing legitimate institutions.

When it works through those institutions, it risks empowering the very actors that have prolonged the crisis but when it pushes harder, it is accused of intervention.

The criticism from parts of the High Council of State toward UNSMIL’s structured dialogue shows the sensitivity of this issue, the accusation was not only that UN staff had interfered in procedure but it was that an international mission was shaping a political and constitutional path that some Libyan actors believe should remain under national institutional control.

But no actor gives up power because a communiqué says it should, forces in the east have built a territorial system that stretches across much of eastern Libya and parts of the south. Armed groups in the west control neighbourhoods, ministries, detention sites, revenue points and political access. Southern networks manage borders, smuggling routes and local alliances.

These actors are not abstract obstacles but they are the living system of Libya’s division.

UNSMIL can encourage unification and support military dialogue, it can work with the 5+5 Joint Military Commission and international security working groups and also help define principles for professional forces under civilian authority.

But military unification is not a technical problem but rather it is a political surrender issue.

Someone must give up command, accept subordination and lose the ability to use armed power as a form of political insurance.

That is why security reform repeatedly stalls, everyone agrees in principle that Libya needs unified institutions but almost no one agrees in practice on who should command them.

Foreign interference then hardens the division as this Libyan conflict has never been purely domestic.

Egypt, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Qatar, Italy, France, the United States and others have all shaped the country’s trajectory in different ways.

Some have provided military support, some have provided diplomatic backing but they all insists on stability through their own priorities.

This external competition clearly reduces the UN’s ability to act as the central mediator.

In theory, the UN is the framework through which international actors coordinate but in practice states often treat the UN as one platform among many as they endorse its language publicly while pursuing their own bilateral channels privately.

For Libyan powers, this creates irresistible opportunity.

This is why Libya has become vulnerable to diplomatic fragmentation, as there is not one peace process but overlapping negotiations, security channels, economic discussions, migration deals and elite bargains.

The Security Council itself is part of the problem, the UN mission operates under mandates approved by the Council but Libya’s foreign backers do not share one strategic vision.

Some members prioritise elections, others prioritise counterterrorism, migration control, oil stability, or limiting rival influence and when major powers disagree, enforcement becomes weak and sanctions become difficult.

The arms embargo is the clearest example of international weakness, Libya has been under restrictions for years, yet armed factions continue to acquire weapons, drones and external support.

If the UN system cannot stop weapons from reaching different rival camps then it can be argued that it cannot credibly guarantee that those camps will obey any foreign political deadline or order.

This enforcement issue damages public trust as many Libyans have heard the same promises for more than a decade, such as incoming election, unified institutions, armed groups that will be integrated, foreign fighters will leave, corruption will be addressed, oil revenue will be managed transparently.

That is why UN language can begin to sound far from reality, the mission speaks of inclusion, consensus and national ownership and, while those concepts are necessary, in a country where armed actors still control the coercive environment, such language can feel fake rather than powerful.

This does not mean the UN should leave Libya as that would be a tremendous mistake.

Without the UN, the process would likely become even more fragmented and more openly dominated by competing foreign states, here the mission still provides a reference point, a record of commitments, a space for dialogue and an international framework that prevents the Libyan file from disappearing into a formal civil war.

Without the hope of actual fair election Libya’s political class would be more comfortable with the stall becoming permanent, this international pressure for elections, even when imperfect, remains one of the few tools available to challenge the indefinite survival of unelected institutions.

But keeping elections alive does not mean and does not equal making them elections possible.

A credible vote requires security guarantees, legal clarity, accepted institutions, financing, administrative capacity and confidence that the result will be respected.

The UN’s failure, then, is not only the UN’s failure but also the failure of Libyan elites to accept responsibility for the state they claim to defend.

From this failure we can understand the real problem, which is whether Libya’s domestic and foreign actors are willing to let the UN process become binding.

That would require Libyan institutions to accept clear rules, it would require armed groups to face real pressure, it would require foreign states to stop using Libya as a field for parallel influence and it would require the Security Council to treat obstruction and embargo violations as serious offences instead of routine features of the process.

Until that happens, the UN will continue to manage Libya’s instability rather than end it.

Libya’s crisis is sustained by armed power, institutional self interest, foreign competition and the absence of enforcement, that is why the country remains stuck despite years of international attention.

The UN can stabilise Libya only if the rival powers stop treating mediation as theatre and begin treating compromise as binding, otherwise every diplomatic breakthrough will remain temporary, every agreement will remain abstract and every promise of sovereignty will remain suspended and unclear.

Until that authority exists the UN will remain important but limited as it can hold the room together but it cannot force the room to agree.

The author is a staff writer on the weekly magazine Libya Gazette and a specialist on Libya.