Libya and the UN mandates: A laboratory of frozen chaos

For nearly fifteen years, Libya has served as the world’s most expensive and repetitive political laboratory. Since the 2011 NATO intervention and the subsequent fall of Muammar Gaddafi, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has operated through a revolving door of mandates and leadership. With the January 2025 appointment of Hanna Tetteh—the eleventh envoy to take up the mantle—each new leadership arrives promising a definitive roadmap to stability, only to find themselves lost in the same familiar cul-de-sac. What was designed as a transitional bridge to a sovereign, democratic state has instead institutionalised a state of ‘frozen chaos,’ where the process itself has become a substitute for progress. In this laboratory, the “solutions” concocted in Geneva, Skhirat, Morocco […]