Blog: The UN Mission in Libya Between the Logic of Liberal Institutionalism and the Challenges of Conflict Management

Since the outbreak of the 2011 revolution, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has accompanied the country’s transition process. According to its mandate, the mission seeks to support Libyan authorities in the post-conflict phase and promote political transition. Over the years, it has played a significant role in supporting and shaping the political process. Its sponsorship of the 2015 Skhirat Agreement—later becoming a reference point for many subsequent political initiatives—remains one of its most notable achievements.

Yet the repeated failure of these initiatives to deliver lasting results, coupled with the perception that those initiatives often become entangled in the conflict itself, has deepened doubts about UNSMIL’s ability to facilitate sustainable solutions. For many Libyans, the continued political and institutional division of the country adds another chapter to what they view as a record of failure.

Describing the UN mission’s efforts as a failure may, however, be somewhat harsh. On the one hand, those most responsible for Libya’s political fragmentation are often the first to question and criticize the mission’s work. On the other hand, the issue is more complex than simply judging either the mission or the United Nations as a success or a failure.

Since its establishment in 1945, the United Nations has operated according to the logic of liberal institutionalism, a school of thought based on the belief that international institutions can regulate state behavior and reduce disorder in the international system by encouraging cooperation during times of conflict. This role has made the UN responsible for developing many of the rules and norms associated with this institutional framework, including international law, human rights law, the laws of war and peace, and protection protocols in times of conflict. The organization also provides platforms for dialogue and negotiation, such as the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the Human Rights Council.

However, numerous experiences have demonstrated that this institutional model is far from ideal. Its objectives are often undermined by the fact that its decisions remain subject to the interests of major powers that dominate its executive bodies—most notably the Security Council, whose five permanent members possess an unrestricted veto. This reality reflects a logic of power more than a logic of cooperation within the institution itself.

Amid the transformations currently reshaping the international order, the United Nations—preparing this year to select its tenth Secretary-General—has faced mounting challenges since the war in Gaza and the return of U.S. President Donald Trump. Among these challenges is the need to rebuild confidence in the effectiveness of institutional approaches to international governance by strengthening the role of its agencies and missions in crisis management.

Transformations in the UN Peacekeeping System

It is important to recognize that the UN Charter was drafted in a context very different from the realities that emerged after World War II. The Charter was primarily designed for interstate wars. Article 39, for example, refers to threats to “international peace and security,” reflecting a period in which conflicts largely involved sovereign states and conventional armies.

The nature of conflict changed significantly after 1945 and throughout the Cold War. Many conflicts became internal, local in character, and often fought through proxies. As a result, the United Nations could no longer rely exclusively on the traditional peacekeeping model—what peacebuilding literature commonly describes as the first generation of international peacekeeping.

This transformation compelled the UN to develop new approaches. Former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali introduced the concept of peace enforcement, which allows for the possible use of coercive force without requiring the consent of states experiencing internal conflict—or of one of the parties involved—provided that the intervention aims to restore peace. This approach became known as the third generation of peacekeeping.

The concept found practical expression in Chapter VII of the UN Charter, under which the Security Council authorized intervention in Kuwait following Iraq’s invasion in 1990. Libya has remained under Chapter VII provisions since 2011. The same evolution was reflected in the Security Council’s adoption of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle in 2005, which permits internationally mandated intervention to protect populations facing violence from their own governments. This was the legal and political framework under which international forces, led by NATO, intervened in Libya.

Nevertheless, this shift in the philosophy and practice of the United Nations remains fundamentally dependent on the approval of major powers—a crucial point for understanding the limits of the organization’s role.

From another perspective, conflict analysis generally distinguishes between coordination conflicts and cooperation conflicts. In the first type, parties lack agreement on the common rules that should govern their interaction. In the second, parties fail to cooperate because each has an incentive to violate agreements in pursuit of immediate gains or to preserve existing advantages.

Although the Libyan conflict cannot be reduced to a single category, it largely resembles a cooperation conflict. There is a constant temptation for one or more actors to break any agreement that is reached. Parties frequently arrive at internationally mediated arrangements, only for those agreements to be violated shortly afterward—whether because one side seeks to improve its military or political position, because mutual trust is weak, or because effective enforcement mechanisms are absent.

This suggests that, beyond the dominance of major powers over UN decision-making, the nature of the conflict itself and the ability of domestic actors to undermine settlements significantly limit the effectiveness of international intervention. The UN’s capacity to enforce compliance ultimately remains contingent on prevailing power balances.

Political Stagnation in Libya and the Dominance of Major Powers

Calling for effective solutions to Libya’s crisis without taking into account the challenges faced by the UN mission—and by institutions operating within the broader framework of liberal institutionalism—risks overlooking the complexity of the Libyan context.

External interference, the polarization of conflict parties, and their repeated inability to move toward genuine stability are not burdens that the United Nations mission bears alone. Yet even if these factors are set aside, a close examination of the mission’s recent efforts makes it difficult to characterize its performance as successful, or even as meaningfully progressive.

The successive briefings delivered by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Hanna Tetteh, since the announcement of her “roadmap” last August, amount largely to acknowledgments of ongoing political deadlock without corresponding progress on the ground. Although the roadmap was followed by initiatives such as the establishment of an advisory committee and the launch of a structured dialogue process, the mission’s efforts have largely remained focused on managing the crisis rather than resolving it.

Because these initiatives are non-binding by design, they lack the capacity to produce a genuine breakthrough in Libya’s political landscape. Tetteh’s repeated briefings continue to highlight persistent deadlock regarding national elections and institutional unification, revealing a clear inability to transform proposed initiatives into enforceable political processes.

As a result, the mission appears trapped in a cycle of reproducing the same tools that have previously failed to deliver results. This perception has only been reinforced by its announcement of a new initiative known as “4+4,” introduced without a serious reassessment of the effectiveness of such recurring approaches or of the mechanisms needed to enforce them.

In this context, the mission’s support—however reluctant—for parallel initiatives such as that of U.S. presidential envoy Massad Boulos, which succeeded in advancing the unification of public spending where the mission had failed, cannot be understood in isolation from the broader relationship between international institutions and the will of major powers. Such support reflects a degree of alignment with the priorities of those powers and strengthens their influence over the Libyan file at the expense of independent UN decision-making.

This raises fundamental questions about the mission’s ability to function as a neutral mediator seeking a peace grounded in international norms and legal principles that serve Libyan society as a whole, rather than a narrow set of actors or externally backed factions.

Conclusion

In the short term, Libya’s situation can no longer accommodate soft, non-binding approaches. What is needed is a model of peacebuilding equipped with credible tools of deterrence and enforcement, one that links any political process to genuine mechanisms of compliance.

In the longer term, however, there is an equally pressing need to reform international institutions and strengthen the independence of global enforcement bodies. The strategic logic underpinning peacekeeping and peace enforcement within the framework of liberal institutionalism suggests that international action can positively influence conflict trajectories when international capabilities are effectively employed to promote stability.

Yet such positive outcomes depend on the proper design of peacebuilding operations. This requires moving beyond a purely realist understanding of international politics—one centered on state power and interests at the expense of cooperation—and ensuring that enforcement bodies, particularly the Security Council, are less constrained by the dominance of major powers.

This makes it essential to revive the long-standing debate on reforming international institutions in ways that enhance the neutrality and effectiveness of organizations such as the United Nations and its missions, enabling them to better serve the cause of global stability.