The impact of a UN cash crisis on Libya

It may loosely be described as the law of unintended consequences. For over three decades the former ruler of Libya, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, was seen by the West as a particular threat to its interests. Gadaffi was variously accused of helping to fund the Irish Republican Army and other groups deemed to be terrorists by Britain and other countries. In Africa, Gadaffi pursued a dream of pan-Africanism, at various points attempting to forge ever closer ties with countries such as Chad and Syria. However, following the fall of Baghdad, the mercurial Gadaffi found himself being courted by the same powers that had despatched the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein. Suddenly, Libya, with all its gas and oil, became a country that the West wanted to befriend. A British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, went to Tripoli to shake hands with the Libyan strongman and I remember speaking to another UK Foreign Office Minister, Mike O’Brien, about his time with Gadaffi inside his Bedouin tent at that time. Gadaffi was persuaded to give up his weapons of mass destruction in 2003 (he possessed them, unlike Saddam Hussein). But then, as history will recall, rebellion in the east of the country provided a pretext for British and French military intervention. In so doing, both countries evoked a semi-official UN mantra, ‘Responsibility to Protect’, to intervene to protect civilians in Benghazi from being attacked and by extension helping those rebelling against Gadaffi.  Giving up those weapons proved to be a costly mistake for Gadaffi, who was toppled in a bloody coup and today Libya remains as destabilized, and strife riven as ever.

The latest potential effect of the law of unintended consequences could be set to ripple out from UN Headquarters in New York. Anticipating a substantial budget shortfall caused by the US possibly not paying its annual contributions, or cutting them severely, the UN Secretary General has instituted swingeing cuts of 20% in UN budgets. As reported here in the Maghreb Insider, this has prompted the head of the United Nations Mission in Libya, UN Special Representative Hanna Tetteh, to raise the issue of proposed US funding cuts, that she says could jeopardise efforts to stabilize Libya and to hold national elections. The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has been working hard to bring all sides to together to hold what would be the first elections since 2014 and progress looked to being made sufficient to holding them this year. The funding for the long-planned election would normally be required to come from the UN’s regular, core, budget, which would be affected by any major US deduction in funding. Tetteh has said that; “We won’t be able to roll this out the way we had anticipated, and that means it will be more difficult to get the public understanding and the public buy-in.” Elections on their own are not necessarily a way of binding a country wracked by civil war together, but all sides seem to be clear that they would at least help. But the situation grows ever urgent, for UNSMIL’s mandate runs out in September of this year, and there are already questions as to whether, given the UN’s cash crisis, it will be renewed at all. And if that happens the prospect of elections happening any time soon look increasingly remote. 

*Mark Seddon is a former Speechwriter to UN Secretary-General Ban ki moon & former Adviser to the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly