Tripoli, Libya—The United Nations’ new Libya envoy, Abdoulaye Bathily, took up post in Tripoli Friday, vowing to work towards elections in the North African country, rocked by over a decade of conflict.
“I arrived in Tripoli today to assume my functions as the special representative of the secretary general for Libya and head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL),” he said in a statement.
His inauguration comes months into a power struggle between two rival governments in the latest constellation of Libya’s complex conflict.
Prime minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah, a tycoon who took office in 2021 as part of a UN-led peace process that followed the last major fighting, is based in Tripoli.
His legitimacy is contested by the rival administration of former interior minister Fathi Bashagha, backed by eastern-based strongman Khalifa Haftar and the country’s parliament elected in 2014.
Dbeibah was meant to lead the country to elections in December but they were cancelled amid bitter divisions over who was eligible to stand.
Bathily said his priority was “to identify a consensual pathway towards the holding of inclusive and credible national elections, which should be held as soon as possible on a solid constitutional framework”.
“The United Nations remains committed to supporting Libya to hold inclusive presidential and parliamentary elections,” he added.
“The will of the millions of Libyan people who registered to vote (in December) should be respected.”
Bathily, who held several government posts in his native Senegal before joining the United Naitons nearly a decade ago, is the ninth UN envoy to Libya since a NATO-backed revolt toppled longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011 and plunged the country into chaos.
His nomination comes almost a year after his Slovak predecessor Jan Kubis resigned.