Political Roadmap

Video message from the SRSG to the Libyan people on the announcement of Libya’s Political Roadmap – 21 August 2025

Overview

Based on the Advisory Committee’s recommendations, feedback from the Libyan people, and lessons learned from the failure of previous efforts to hold elections, UNSMIL is convinced that the political process should focus on guaranteeing general elections and unifying institutions through a sequenced approach.

UNSMIL’s roadmap is built around three core pillars, as detailed by SRSG Tetteh in her remarks to the Security Council on 21 August 2025:

Adopting a technically sound and politically viable electoral framework aimed at holding presidential and legislative elections.

Unifying institutions through a new, unified government.

Holding a structured dialogue, enabling broad Libyan participation in tackling critical issues in four areas (governance, economic, security, and reconciliation) to enable elections and shaping a shared vision for addressing long-term conflict drivers.

Implementation

The roadmap will be implemented as a package, with a focus on sequential milestones—where each step facilitates the successful implementation of the next step towards the organization of national elections.

The mission believes that an overall timeframe of 12 to18 months will be required for the successful completion of the roadmap, which will culminate with national elections.

The roadmap necessitates the following steps:

First, the capacity of the High National Elections Commission (HNEC) must be enhanced by re-constituting its board of directors to fill existing vacancies and ensuring its financial independence to organize elections.

In parallel, the electoral framework must be amended to address key issues that contributed to the electoral failure in 2021.

Following these two steps, which could be concluded before November 2025 if there were political will, there must be an agreement on a new, unified government capable of creating a conducive environment for credible elections while managing key governance functions effectively.

This will be accompanied by the implementation of critical actions to support HNEC’s operational readiness and address key issues around security, governance, economic management and reconciliation to facilitate the conduct of elections and will enable tracking progress of the parties and institutions.

In parallel, UNSMIL will convene a structured dialogue to engage not just political and security actors, but also the Libyan people, including political parties, civil society, academia, cultural components, women, youth and persons with disabilities. The structured dialogue will seek to:

Explore concrete solutions to ongoing governance challenges and issues that may hinder the electoral process and feed into the constitutional process.

Lay the foundation for a national vision that will shape the path to long term stability.

Produce recommendations to shape immediate policy changes on security sector and economic reforms, and reconciliation.

Safeguards

The Mission will ensure safeguards are built into the roadmap so that if parties are delaying progress, alternatives can be pursued. As happened with municipal elections in August 2025, there is always the risk that status quo actors may seize any opportunity to delay or derail the realization of the Libyan people’s democratic rights. Therefore, at any stage of the process, if there is obstruction by any parties, UNSMIL can and will take any necessary measures and seek the support of the Security Council to ensure that the process we want to embark on now can bring an end to successive transitions.