Two Roadmaps, One Problem: What Libya Reveals About the AU's Limits and the UN's Standing
Libya is often portrayed as a country searching for a political solution; in reality, it is grappling with multiple competing solutions. These are competing rather than complementary because they draw on different signatories, set incompatible timelines, and claim the same source of legitimacy, so advancing one means displacing another. Fifteen years after the uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, rival institutions still govern different parts of the territory, and international organizations are competing to fix it. This competition among international organizations reveals as much about the multilateral system as it does about Libya. When mandates overlap, the system defaults to UN primacy rather than coordination, which risks crowding out the regional bodies it relies on for legitimacy, local knowledge, and burden-sharing.
After Gaddafi's fall, competing factions emerged almost immediately. In 2012, power passed peacefully to the General National Congress, a brief moment of optimism. However, by 2014, the transition deteriorated into armed conflict. The country split between a House of Representatives based in the east, aligned with the military commander Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army, and rival authorities in Tripoli in the west. This divide was sustained in large part by rival foreign patrons and by control over the country's oil revenues. In 2019, Haftar launched a 14-month offensive to seize the capital from the internationally recognized Tripoli-based government, which failed. A 2020 ceasefire ended the open warfare but not the division. The presidential and parliamentary elections planned for December 2021 collapsed amid disputes over the eligibility of leading candidates including Haftar; Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the former ruler; and Abdulhamid Dbeibah, the interim prime minister of the western-based Government of National Unity. Rival camps aligned with Haftar and Dbeibah still effectively govern different parts of the country today. Since the collapse of the planned elections, every settlement has stalled on the same questions: who holds political legitimacy, who determines the electoral rules, and who retains power. Two frameworks now compete to break that cycle.
The first is the Tripartite Agreement of June 16, 2026, in which the Libyan High Council of State, the Presidential Council, and the House of Representatives signed a roadmap for ending the transitional period. It commits the parties to simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections by February 17, 2027, the anniversary of the 2011 uprising and only eight months after signing, well under the 4+4 framework's 24-month horizon. What sets it apart from earlier roadmaps is enforcement: an oversight committee pairs the head of the High National Elections Commission with eastern and western members of the 5+5 Joint Military Committee and security sector representatives, so neither camp controls the process alone.
The second framework is a UN-backed 4+4 Agreement, signed in Tripoli on August 30, 2026. It brings together two representatives from each of Libya's four main power centers: the House of Representatives, the High Council of State, Dbeibah's Government of National Unity, and Haftar's Eastern command. It mandates parliamentary and presidential elections within 24 months, and provides that if the legislature and the High Council fail to approve it within a month, the parties will seek broad national adoption and international backing through the U.N. Security Council. That window could extend to August 2028, roughly 18 months beyond the Tripartite Agreement's February 2027 deadline. This difference reflects competing assumptions about the transition: the tripartite roadmap presumes that a rapid vote will compel a resolution, whereas the 4+4 framework presumes that additional time is needed to settle the underlying disputes, at the risk of allowing incumbents to delay.
The tripartite agreement preceded the 4+4 framework, Libya's own political bodies signed it, and the African Union (AU) welcomed it. The UN, by contrast, did not mention the tripartite deal in its public remarks two days later, prioritizing its own facilitated roadmap instead, and ultimately taking center stage.
The AU's formal role has not translated into equivalent practical influence, because its endorsements carry weight only when the UN chooses to defer to them. One clear strength of the AU is its emphasis on the societal dimensions of the crisis, most concretely the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, signed in Addis Ababa in February 2025 under AU auspices, which prioritizes reconciliation, transitional justice, and social cohesion, a dimension electoral roadmaps tend to neglect. The AU also helped secure the unanimous April 2026 adoption of Resolution 2819, which renewed UN sanctions enforcement against illicit oil exports and arms trafficking in Libya, by coordinating with Africa's Security Council members and the United Kingdom, Libya's penholder.
Resolution 2819's success might seem to disprove the AU's structural limits, but a closer look shows it actually confirms them. The AU secured that outcome not by acting independently, but by working through the Security Council, the very body whose primacy constrains it. Only the Council can impose or renew UN sanctions, and the UN Charter requires its authorization for any enforcement action by regional organizations, so the AU could shape the resolution's text but had to rely on the three African members, who hold no veto, and on the United Kingdom, a permanent member, to carry it. The AU has no seat with a veto, no independent enforcement capacity, and little money compared to the states that actually underwrite Libya's factions. Nor does it control the external patronage and oil revenues that actually sustain the conflict. Its main tools are endorsement and convening power, both of which are only as strong as the willingness of others to defer. When the UN launches a rival process, the AU can welcome, encourage, and advise, but cannot compel anyone to choose its preferred framework. An Institute for Security Studies analysis warns that the overlapping initiatives risk duplication and forum-shopping, a dynamic that favors the party with the most patronage to offer rather than the one with the best plan.
The UN's emergence as the dominant diplomatic framework may reinforce its standing as an organization committed to upholding international order, but the path it took to get there reveals a shortfall in how the world's largest international organization operates. The UN's claim to legitimacy in Libya rests on being a neutral convener that parties trust to manage a process, not an actor that owns the outcome. That claim was called into question when the UN prioritized its own framework over an earlier, largely Libyan-owned roadmap that Africa's continental body had already welcomed. The implicit message to regional organizations was that they can propose solutions, but only the UN has the authority to adopt them. This is a poor incentive structure for a system that depends on regional bodies for legitimacy, local knowledge, and burden-sharing. If the AU and others conclude that their initiatives will be absorbed or ignored, they would have less incentive to invest in mediation and more incentive to focus on positioning.
There is also a credibility problem the UN cannot escape by adopting the winning plan, as, over time, its role in Libya has shifted from a problem-solver to a mediator whose focus is on signed agreements rather than unified institutions. Each new roadmap that follows the earlier failed ones invites the question of why the new one will differ. Elite incentives are also relevant here, as many elites view competitive elections as a threat to their interests, which makes it doubtful that they would accept a vote that could remove most of them from positions of authority. A UN process that produces another signing ceremony without a mechanism to bind contingencies risks confirming the perception that the organization is a venue for elite bargaining, not a guarantor of change. The risk is higher now that other actors, such as a separate US-led diplomatic track, are also working to move the eastern and western camps toward unification.
The UN's best response is to stop treating the tripartite deal as a rival and integrate the two frameworks. Analysts at the Institute for Security Studies have argued for harmonization with the February 2027 date, oversight committee, and security-sector links being assets, and the 4+4 framework's 24-month horizon could accommodate them. For the AU, the lesson is to invest in its own distinctive duties, reconciliation, and transitional justice, rather than competing for the electoral press. Libya will test whether multilateral bodies can coordinate effectively when their mandates overlap, and multiple actors pursue different approaches to political transition. Treating regional initiatives as inputs would strengthen the UN's standing, while treating them as competition risks winning the roadmap but losing the argument about what international mediation is for.