Clara Portela & Jean-Louis Romanet Perroux. Global Governance. Volume 28, Issue 2, April-June 2022.
The UN frequently employs sanctions on the same conflicts where it attempts mediation. While both efforts carry a UN stamp, they follow different political logics that are not always coherent with each other: sanctions are enacted by the UN Security Council, while mediation is led by a special representative/envoy of the UN Secretary General, often on the basis of a Security Council mandate. This article explores two UN interventions in Libya that combined mediation with mandatory sanctions: the conflict leading to the overthrow of the Muammar Qaddafi regime (2011) and the civil war that ensued when the country was split between the first elected parliament and its successor (2014-2015). The Libyan case illustrates that the coherence of mediation and sanctions ultimately depends on the UN Security Council unity of purpose.
Introduction
The United Nations frequently employs sanctions on the same conflicts where it attempts mediation. While both efforts carry a UN stamp, they follow different political logics and processes. Most importantly, although both instruments pursue the maintenance of peace and stability, they do not always reinforce each other. Libya represents an intriguing case to study the interactions between UN sanctions and mediation for a number of reasons. First, over the past decade, the UN employed sanctions and mediation concurrently during two different conflict situations in Libya, both of which offer valuable insights on the interplay between these instruments. Second, having a similar context helps identify which variables led to a different outcome in the two cases. Third, Libya draws the interest of great powers, some of which are permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC), the primary global peace and security decisionmaking body. Hence, conflicts in Libya expose underlying power dynamics within the UNSC, which greatly influence the nature and success of UN sanctions and mediation.
The first conflict episode is the 20U revolution, during which the UNSC imposed a wide array of sanctions while the UN Secretary-General appointed a special envoy to mediate between the regime and opposition forces. This conflict episode started with the first crackdown on protests in Benghazi in February 2011, and ended in October 2011 when Muammar Qaddafi was killed in Sirte. The second conflict episode is the low-intensity civil war that followed the 2014 parliamentary elections, when the first elected parliament refused to hand over power to its successor. Once again, the UNSC imposed sanctions while a UN mediator attempted to bring about an end to hostilities. This conflict episode started in May 2014, when rogue General Khalifa Haftar launched a military campaign in eastern Libya, turning the country’s political conflict into an armed confrontation. Although the conflict persisted, this episode ends with the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) brokered in December 2015.
Our study seeks to explain why the combination of mediation and sanctions in the Libyan crises yielded mixed results. In the 2011 revolution, sanctions and mediation failed to reinforce each other; rather, sanctions were deployed without consideration on their impact on mediation, and were de facto prioritized over mediation attempts. Sanctions timing, stringency, and targeting closed the space for mediation, effectively becoming a hindrance. During the 2014-2015 civil war and its immediate aftermaths, the picture was more nuanced. Sanctions and mediation did sometimes reinforce each other. However, this occurred only to a limited extent and resulted from the personal initiative of UN mediators rather than by design. The potential for synergies remained ultimately untapped.
Our analysis indicates that the misfit between sanctions and mediation results from misalignment between the UN mediator and the UNSC or disagreements among Council members. With the help of the principal-agent (PA) framework, we conceptualize the mediator as an agent that exercises a competence delegated by two principals: the Secretary-General and the UNSC, which is a composite entity that concurrently issues sanctions. Our analysis foregrounds that the composite nature of a principal constitutes a greater challenge for coherence than the duality of principals. Our study is based on a diachronic paired comparison of our conflict episodes, which relies on the analysis of documents, secondary literature, and seventeen original interviews with officials and diplomats who had a direct exposure to the conflicts.
The article’s first section outlines the conceptual framing of the study. The second and third sections present the empirical evidence, outlining how sanctions and mediation interacted in both conflict episodes. A fourth section connects the empirical findings with the conceptual framework. We conclude that complementarity between sanctions and mediation was hampered by contradictory aims pursued by different members of the highly politicized “principal.” Hence, the synergy between sanctions and mediation efforts ultimately hinges on the unity of purpose among their originators. A final section concludes by summarizing the findings.
Policy Coherence in a Principal-Agent Framework
The departing point of our conceptual framework is the notion of policy coherence, which denotes the compatibility of policies produced by distinct units of a single actor. Sanctions and mediation are produced by different organizational units under separate procedures, which creates a risk of misalignment. Policy coherence is an aspirational notion defined as agreement among different organizational units producing different policies that result in an outcome that is free of contradictions. The congruence between the outputs of different units within the same organization is referred to as institutional coherence. While coherence among international actors and among the messages they communicate to conflict parties are considered critical for successful mediation, the alignment between UN sanctions and mediation has not yet been explored from the angle of institutional coherence.
Since they are produced by separate units—the UN mediator and UNSC—within the same organization, UN sanctions and mediation may be out of step with each other. This is despite the existence within the organization, of certain mechanisms to foster coherence: First, the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) at the UN Secretariat, tasked with supporting mediation and sanction endeavors, has the role of coordinating both policies. Second, regular briefings by the mediator to the UNSC facilitate coherence between UNSC sanctions and mediation by providing a communication channel between them.
The notion of policy coherence has not achieved a sufficient level of sophistication to explain the generation of incoherence, which is why we resort to the PA framework. The principal-agent framework refers to the relationship between a principal that delegates a function to an agent through a delegation contract. The rationale for delegation is that the tasks to be performed exceed the organizational capacity of the principal: Rather than performing an act itself, the principal delegates authority to a specialized agent with the expertise, time, political ability, or resources to accomplish it. The act of delegation entails the attribution of some degree of autonomy to achieve the prescribed goals. PA scholarship does not assume loyal agent behavior; rather, it is often concerned with “agency slack,” which occurs when agents embark on independent action undesired by the principal. For PA scholars, some slack is to be expected in all delegation relationships: since the preferences of principals and agents seldom align, they assume a “natural conflict of interest” between them. Agency slack occurs when agents pursue their own preferences (dubbed “slippage”), or when agents minimize efforts (“shirking”). Control mechanisms such as monitoring are intended to address nonconformist behaviour by the agent.
In the PA framework, actors are defined only by their relationship to each other. When applied to the UN, the UNSC is often treated as the agent of the member states, which are its principals. Alternatively, the UNSC is sometimes seen as the principal of sanctions committees, or of regional organizations when these are given a mandate to implement certain tasks. In the case at hand, UN mediators are agents to whom the UN delegates tasks it cannot fulfill by itself. Mediators are appointed as special representatives of the Secretary General, positions created to respond to increasing demands for UN involvement in crises around the world.
The peculiarity of the UN mediator is that he or she has two principals. In our exploration, we regard both the Secretary-General and the UNSC as principals of the UN mediator. While the authority for the appointment of mediators resides with the Secretary-General, their mandate is often defined by the UNSC, whose members also exert a strong influence over the choice of mediators. Moreover, in conflicts of geopolitical significance, mediation missions are closely overseen by the UNSC. The relationship between a special representative and the UNSC is compared to “that between a CEO and a company’s board of directors.”
The duality of principals is not at odds with the PA framework. On the contrary, the framework contemplates multiple principals when the PA relationship entails several contracts. In our case, while only the UNSC can impose sanctions, mediation efforts can be mandated by the Security Council, or carried out under the authority of the Secretary-General in the discharge of good offices. The UN mediator is subject to multiple principals—UNSC and Secretary-General—one of which—the UNSC—is a collective principal, since its various members come to a joint decision and enter into a single contract with the agent. Meanwhile, the UNSC and the Secretary-General constitute multiple principals because each of them enters into a separate contract with the agent.
Therefore, UN mediators operate within a complex framework: First, their mediation authority can emanate from either the Secretary-General or the UNSC. Second, UN mediators do not hold decisionmaking power in sanctions management, which remains in the hands of the UNSC. Nevertheless, the mediator may highlight peace spoilers as candidates for designations during regular briefings to the UNSC. This affords the Council an opportunity to support mediation efforts by targeting spoilers with sanctions. These regular briefings also represent a mechanism through which the UNSC exercises oversight over the mediator.
This picture allows us to identify two main sources of policy incoherence: potential preference heterogeneity between principals (i.e., a mismatch between the Secretary-General’s and the UNSC’s mediation objectives); and potential preference heterogeneity within the UNSC, which may impede agreement and obstruct sanctions and mediation mandates. A third form concerns a possible incoherence between the principal(s) on the one hand, and the agent on the other. This fits into the standard PA notion of “slack,” and it would occur if the mediator purposefully deviated from its mandate.
In the following sections, we analyze the UN experience in Libya through our conceptual framework that helps us identify which of these potential sources is responsible for incoherence between sanctions and mediation in Libya.
In line with the exploratory nature of our study, we do not set any expectation regarding which of these potential sources of incoherence will materialise, if any. Nevertheless, we anticipate that incoherence between sanctions and mediation is likely to arise from conflicts between multiple principals or within a collective principal, because mechanisms for institutional coordination are weak. By contrast, we foresee that the odds of agency slack are kept in check by control mechanisms such as selection and reporting.
The 2011 Revolution: Prioritizing Qaddafi’s Downfall over Negotiation
On 15 February 2011, protests in Benghazi led to clashes with government forces. In the wake of similar incidents in Tunisia and Egypt, the government crackdown ignited a popular uprising that rapidly spread in the country. The international reaction was sweeping. The UNSC condemned the crackdown immediately, as did the African Union (AU), while the Arab League suspended Libya’s membership. The US froze the assets of President Qaddafi’s government and family. On 27 February 2011, opposition forces formed the National Transitional Council (NTC) in Benghazi to coordinate the struggle against Qaddafi.
On 10 March 2011, the AU Peace and Security Council formed an Ad Hoc High-Level Committee on Libya. Following calls by the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council, the UNSC passed Resolution 1973 on 17 March, which contained language resonating with the notion of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). It imposed a no-fly zone and authorized the use of force to protect civilians in Libya. Two days on, a coalition led by France, the UK, and the United States launched a bombing campaign against Qaddafi forces by extensively interpreting Resolution 1973. Their intervention also opened the door to the widespread meddling of regional powers in Libyan affairs.
Meanwhile, a simultaneous mediation track was launched by the AU, which on 25 March proposed a road map for Libya calling for a cease-fire, dialogue, humanitarian access, and political reforms. In April, US president Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and British Prime Minister David Cameron issued a joint statement calling for Qaddafi’s resignation, leaving few doubts about the goal of their military intervention. Concurrent mediation efforts failed: the NTC was prepared to accept a cease-fire only on the condition of Qaddafi’s departure, while the comprehensive AU plan was rejected. By June, pressure intensified on the ruling regime with the issuance of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against Muammar Qaddafi and two members of the regime’s leadership, while the European Union (EU) listed seven Libyan harbors. The UN General Assembly recognized the NTC as the sole legitimate representative of Libya, and the UNSC established the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL). The following month, opposition forces captured Qaddafi in Sirte and put an end to his life.
Sanctions and Mediation
Following the uprisings of February 2011 in Libya, and fearing a brutal repression by the Qaddafi regime, the UNSC adopted a broad array of sanctions at remarkable speed. On 26 February 2011, the UNSC passed Resolution 1970, embargoing arms supplies to and from Libya and placing a travel ban and assets freeze on Qaddafi and his entourage. The resolution also put in place a Sanctions Committee, and referred the situation in Libya to the ICC.
On 10 March 2011, the UNSG appointed former Jordanian foreign minister Abdel Elah Mohamed Al-Khatib as his special envoy to Libya. The UN Secretary-General tasked Al-Khatib to offer his good offices, “consult broadly with the Libyan authorities, neighboring States, regional organizations and other stakeholders, and explore with them how best to resolve the current crisis”. Al-Khatib’s mandate drew from UNSC Resolution 1970, which called for an immediate, comprehensive cease-fire to address humanitarian needs, provide humanitarian protection for the Libyan people, and also to fulfill their legitimate demands. In short, Al-Khatib’s mediation objectives were to seek an end to violence, prevent an escalation of the conflict, and ensure humanitarian access.
One week after Al-Khatib’s appointment, the UNSC broadened the sanctions regime by adopting Resolution 1973. It imposed a no-fly zone, which banned flights over, to, and from Libya; authorizing states to enforce compliance with the flight ban and to inspect aircraft suspected of carrying arms; froze assets controlled by the Qaddafi regime; and extended designation criteria to individuals who violated Resolution 1970. Importantly, only individuals and entities associated with the state and with Qaddafi’s entourage were targeted, while none of the rebels were hit by the travel or asset freeze.
In parallel to Al-Khatib’s mediation efforts, in April 2011 the UN created a Post-Conflict Planning for Libya Task Force in New York under the helm of Ian Martin. The task force’s mission was to assess postconflict needs and challenges in Libya. According to UN officials, it was clear to all that the Qaddafi regime was doomed. Thus, the team’s mandate to prepare for “postconflict” in Libya was really understood as meaning “post-Qaddafi.”
Mediation efforts during the 2011 revolution failed to secure humanitarian access, and to broker a cease-fire and a peaceful outcome to the conflict. Until the last months of the conflict, international organizations were able to provide humanitarian assistance only to rebel-controlled eastern Libya. The UN did not manage to centralize international mediation efforts under its banner either, and its mediator did not succeed in rallying support from regional and other international powers intervening in Libya. Most importantly, the UN mediator did not manage to obtain the support of all conflict parties, as sanctions targeted only one side, thereby favoring the other. The lack of international backing for mediation, the continued support that a number of foreign powers provided to the opposition, and the military intervention they carried out against the Qaddafi regime explain why conflict parties never agreed to a ceasefire and to a mediated transition. In particular, the opposition appeared to be the least inclined to seek a peaceful outcome to the conflict given the one-sided nature of the sanctions and explicit support for regime change by leading powers.
In sharp contrast with the weakness of the UN to support its own mediation efforts, the 2011 sanctions regime against Libya was one of the most restrictive ever imposed by the UNSC. Listed entities included the Libyan Central Bank and the Libyan Oil Company, which are key to the economy. Other than being one of the broadest sanctions regimes in contemporary UN practice, the speed at which sanctions were adopted was unusually fast. UN action entailed stringent measures, some of which do not qualify as sanctions sensu stricto but had nevertheless had highly constraining effects on the regime, such as the no-fly zone, Qaddafi’s ICC referral, and the authorization to inspect vessels on the high seas. (Moreover, Canada, France, the UK, and the United States signaled unequivocal support for the opposition forces and declared that they were pursuing an end to the Qaddafi regime.
Interactions
During the 2011 revolution, a myriad of coercive measures including severe sanctions, an ICC referral, and a no-fly zone preceded UN mediation efforts. In the course of this conflict, UN sanctions remained disconnected from UN mediation efforts, failing to reinforce one another. Furthermore, NATO’s bombing campaign simultaneously created a more formidable obstacle to mediation. When Abdelelah Al-Khatib was appointed UN special envoy to Libya on 7 March, one party to the conflict was already targeted by stringent international sanctions. These, and other actions by the UN and some of the permanent members of the UNSC, the Permanent Five (P5), complicated mediation in several ways.
First, coupled to the referral of Qaddafi and close associates to the ICC, and to the broad array of sanctions adopted against the regime, the UN-approved military intervention undermined the impartiality of the UN as a mediator. Impartiality is a key principle of mediation, as stressed in the UN Guidance for Effective Mediation, which recommends that mediators “avoid association with punitive measures against conflict parties by other actors and minimize public criticism of the parties as much as possible, while maintaining frank exchanges in private.” The ransacking of the UN’s offices in Tripoli a few hours after the bombing of Qaddafi’s compound in April 2011 revealed that regime loyalists perceived the UN as associated with the military campaign. Hence, the UN special envoy had to try to convince the Qaddafi regime that UN mediation efforts were genuine and impartial at a time when the regime was targeted by multiple UN sanctions, and its forces were being hit by a coalition of countries acting on the basis of a vaguely worded UNSC authorization. Furthermore, the asymmetry of UN sanctions was aggravated by the addition of supplementary measures by various actors, including the United States and the EU. Furthermore, NATO’s continued bombing while Al-Khatib was attempting to meet Qaddafi in Tripoli on 7 June 2011 angered regime officials, who conveyed to Al-Khatib’s team their shock at the absence of a pause during his visit.
Second, the fact that sanctions exclusively targeted the Qaddafi regime, led opposition forces to believe that their bargaining position would improve over time. Thus, sanctions encouraged the rebels to intensify fighting and seek complete victory rather than a mediated outcome. In theory, the fact that no arms were allowed into Libya favored Qaddafi as he could rely on his own weapons stockpiles, which the opposition forces lacked. However, as the arms embargo was not enforced, foreign weapons supplies to opposition forces continued unabated throughout the conflict. Since abundant military equipment reached opposition forces despite the embargo, their growing military capacity enhanced their prospects of victory. They consistently rejected proposed ceasefires, such as that contained in the AU plan, because they did not foresee the departure of Qaddafi. One can speculate that listing or threatening to list some opposition leaders or force commanders would have dispelled the perception that they enjoyed unconditional Western support, and may have encouraged them to negotiate with the Qaddafi regime.
Third, no exit options were offered to the regime. Asset freezes and travel bans against Qaddafi and his inner circle coupled with ICC investigations and subsequent indictments narrowed the prospects of a safe exit for Qaddafi officials, which might have enabled a negotiated settlement. There were no provisions in the resolutions explicitly conditioning the lifting of sanctions to Qaddafi’s compliance with its demands. Again, one can speculate that, had such provisions existed, they might have been invoked by Qaddafi when he saw his downfall looming. UN sanctions may have encouraged defections, similar to those of General Abdel Fattah Younes and Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa. Coupled with the listing of the National Oil Corporation and the Libyan Central Bank, financial restrictions curtailed the regime’s ability to maintain its network of clientelism—including payments to mercenaries. Defections and bans combined to weaken the position of the Qaddafi regime. Finally, by acknowledging the AU’s parallel mediation initiative, the UNSC recognized multiple mediation tracks, thereby weakening Al-Khatib’s authority.
One-sided sanctions conflict with the logic of mediation, which seeks a compromise between conflict parties and involves an impartial third-party effort to facilitate it. Therefore, the concerted regime change agenda, of which sanctions policy was part, manifestly constituted an obstacle to mediation. Unsurprisingly, mediation failed, and the Libyan 2011 revolution ended with the complete victory of one side. Furthermore, none of the Western powers that intervened in Libya in 2011 had any appetite to deploy forces or invest substantive political capital to stabilize the country. As a result, regional powers such as Turkey, Qatar, Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates built up their support for opposing sides in Libya, which paved the way to the resurgence of conflict.
First Libyan Civil War (2014-2015): The “Old” versus the “New” Parliament
Libya’s 2011 interim constitution provided for a transitional government and a parliament, which was elected in 2012 and called the General National Congress (GNC). In early 2014, Libyans called for new legislative elections, invoking the end of GNC’s mandate and protesting its inability to carry out political reforms. Capitalizing on these protests, and on widespread popular resentment against radical Islamist armed groups in Benghazi, in May General Haftar launched a military campaign in eastern Libya called Karama (Dignity) to rid it of Islamists, declaring the Islamists-dominated GNC illegitimate.
In the June 2014 national legislative elections, Islamist parties suffered a dramatic defeat. A coalition of loosely defined “Islamist” militias in the west subsequently launched a military campaign called Fajr Libya (Libya Dawn) to recapture Tripoli and its International Airport from the hands of an antiIslamist militia. In light of the escalation of fighting, UN mediator Tarek Mitri attempted to mediate between conflicting parties to end violence and secure humanitarian access, to no avail. In August, following Mitri’s inability to gain traction with mediation, and the significant escalation in the conflict the UNSG appointed Bernardino Leon as his successor. To complicate matters, in November 2014, Libya’s Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that the June 2014 election that led to the creation of the new parliament, the House of Representatives (HoR), was unconstitutional.
Leon launched a series of talks to lead conflicting parties to a political agreement, and to form a unity government. In response to the increasing threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Libya, the UNSC relaxed the arms embargo to allow the supply of weapons to official Libyan armed forces to combat ISIL. After one year of talks, in December 2015 representatives from the GNC and the HoR signed the Libyan Political Agreement. Based on the LPA, Fayez al-Serraj, chairman of the newly created Presidential Council, formed the Government of National Accord (GNA), which was endorsed by the UNSC.
Sanctions and Mediation
Successive sanctions adopted from 2014 to 2016 pursued two main aims: first, supporting mediation efforts to overcome the GNC-HoR division and facilitate the emergence of a unified national government; and, second, mitigating a range of transnational threats, from the exploitation of Libya’s considerable natural resources to migrant smuggling.
UNSC Resolution 2144 of March 2014 assigned UNSMIL the task of supporting the Libyan-led transition and institution-building process aimed at establishing a “peaceful, democratic, independent and united Libya.” Specifically, this entailed setting up a single national dialogue, and helping establish an inclusive and transparent constitutional drafting process.
Despite the de-legitimation of Libya’s governing institutions, the UN insisted that any solution to the current crisis had to be negotiated within the framework of the current political legitimacy emanating from the elections. Faced with the duplication of executive and legislative bodies, the UN recognized a single executive power, the GNA, and a single parliament, the HoR. In line with this stance, Leon interpreted his mandate’s core mission as leading Libyans to agree on a single set of political institutions for the country and on a road map for Libya’s transition to democracy.
Mediation-relevant designation criteria included a limited number of resolutions. Once fighting erupted in 2014, the UNSC expanded the scope of sanctions to allow for the targeting of actors fueling the conflict. In this vein, on 27 August 2014 the UNSC adopted Resolution 2174 foreseeing financial and travel sanctions on individuals and entities that supported acts that threatened the peace, stability or security of Libya, or obstructed its political transition. UNSC Resolution 2214, adopted on 27 March 2015, followed the objective of combating ISIL and related groups.
In September 2015, UNSC Resolution 2238 slightly modified the objectives assigned to UNSMIL, specifying that their goal was to achieve an immediate and unconditional cease-fire, to help finalize the LPA and to help form a GNA. Under the leadership of Leon, UNSMIL succeeded in creating a unified political dialogue process. Just over one year later, by December 2015, the LPA was signed, nominally centralizing executive and legislative powers into single national institutions.
However, the new government never received formal recognition from the HoR. Furthermore, political institutions did not succeed in asserting their power over military commanders. After the UN brokered the LPA, Libyans continued to fight a low-intensity conflict wrestling control over territory, institutions, and resources, while the old executive and legislative bodies did not dissolve. In light of this failure, the UN was accused of hastening the agreement, and of neglecting the security track. Leon and senior UN mediators pointed to formidable challenges: the pronounced fragmentation of one of the parties (the so-called Islamists in the west), the unachievable demands of the other, and the refusal of both to sit at a negotiation table. Instead of holding back the mediation effort indefinitely waiting for the eventual unblocking of the security track, Leon preferred to produce a political framework within which other matters could be negotiated. In particular, he posited that a security agreement could only survive once a political framework was in place.
Despite these challenges, while numerous vessels were designated at the request of Libyan authorities, and the UNSC kept adding new designation criteria over successive resolutions, no new individuals were listed. Although several names were floated, UNSC members could not agree on who to list, as permanent and nonpermanent members supported opposing sides of the conflict.
The absence of individual designations by the UN is conspicuous, and can be associated with a loss of credibility. Absent agreement among UNSC members about the designation of political figures, the listing of nonpolitical actors, such as individuals involved in the illegal oil trade or human trafficking, could have been considered and would have been consistent with official listing criteria. The arms embargo did not have any noticeable effects given that it was extensively flouted, and foreign military assistance continued to be provided to all forces.
Interactions
In comparison to the 2011 conflict, UN sanctions were better synchronized with UN mediation efforts during Libya’s 2014 civil war. However, coherence between sanctions and mediation remained minimal, and sanctions had a modest influence on mediation. This lack of coherence is largely attributable to the lack of unity at the UNSC and to the division of competences within the UN system.
Successive UNSC resolutions spelled out multiple designation criteria including: breaches of UN sanctions or assistance in their evasion; breaches of international humanitarian law, human rights abuses; attacks on airports, harbors, state institutions, or installations such as oil facilities, or foreign missions; support for armed groups or criminal networks through the illicit exploitation of natural resources; threats or coercion on state financial institutions and the Libyan National Oil Company, misappropriation of state funds; or attacks on UN personnel. Although the establishment of designation criteria of individuals and entities responsible for breaching sanctions represents a broader trend in UN sanctions regimes, the multiplication of criteria weakened the signalling force of UN sanctions.
Yet in contrast to the 2011 conflict, and despite the continuous expansion of grounds for listing, no designations of individuals took place. Designations in the 2014-2016 period concerned vessels only, and were requested by Libyan authorities in line with UNSC Resolution 2146.
The Sanctions Committee, which bears responsibility for the designations and operates on a consensus basis, was unable to agree due to divisions in the UNSC and to regional cleavages: Nonpermanent members included Chad and Jordan in 2014 and 2015, and Egypt in 2016, all supporting one side in the conflict. Thus, in contrast to the 2011 episode, the Sanctions Committee attempted to establish a balance between designations in the opposing camps; however, no agreement could be reached.
As outlined above, UN mediators can highlight spoilers as potential candidates for sanctions during their regular brief the Security Council. This affords the UNSC an opportunity to support mediation. This scenario materialized in 2016, when Leon identified potential and actual spoilers and pointed to the possibility of sanctioning them. However, Leon’s use of threats met with resistance by some UNSC members resentful of not having being consulted beforehand. The UNSC ultimately failed to enact the designations.
In the absence of UN listings, sanctions were enacted by individual countries and regional organizations outside the UN framework. In April 2016, the EU listed three Libyan politicians from both camps for obstructing the formation of the unity government: Agila Saleh, president of the HoR; Nouri Abusahmain, GNC chairman; and Khalifa Ghwell, head of the National Salvation Government in Tripoli. The asset freeze and travel ban aimed at weakening opponents of the LPA, at a time where the GNA foreseen in the agreement took office in Tripoli. Shortly afterward, the United States listed Ghwell and Saleh, but not Abusahmain.
Whether sanctions had any impact on the attitude of these three individuals in unclear. Although Saleh became more open to discussions after he was hit by EU sanctions, he did not agree to any deal, and he prevented the official recognition of the GNA. Ghwell refused to dissolve the National Salvation Government and to leave Tripoli until he was ousted by force, while Abusahmain refused to dissolve the GNC. It is possible to speculate that EU sanctions may have contributed to politically isolate Abusahmain, who was not included in the High Council of State on the dissolution of the GNC in April 2016. Nowadays, Abusahmain, who is still on an EU list is no longer a political player in Libya.
Sanctions could have been employed against Saleh, showing that he was no longer considered a legitimate interlocutor because of his obstructionism toward mediation. A retired senior US diplomat confided that the threat of UN sanctions was supposed to act as a warning against spoilers such as Saleh, but that the threat was not sufficiently robust. If Saleh had been placed under UN sanctions, his delisting could have been offered in exchange for cooperation, particularly with the vote of confidence for the GNA in the HoR. According to Leon, threatening to place Saleh under a UN travel ban and asset freeze and to exclude him from the political dialogue could have changed his attitude. However, that would have required the consent of Russia, which supported Saleh’s ally General Haftar.
The threat of sanctions had some influence on mediation in at least one instance. Abdulrahman Swehli, a prominent Misrata politician tied to the western “Islamist” coalition, vocally opposed UN-brokered talks. He obstructed the participation of other political figures in the talks, and openly rejected any mediated agreement with the opposing coalition. In June 2015 the United States, France, Spain, and the UK proposed to place him and Othman Maliqta, a militia leader loosely allied with Libya’s internationally recognized government, under a global travel ban and asset freeze. Reportedly, embarrassed Misrata actors approached Swehli’s family to put pressure on him. The threat of sanction against Swehli isolated him, and generated social pressure that persuaded him to change his attitude. Within days, Swehli abandoned his inflammatory rhetoric and became open to dialogue, after which the UN relinquished the threat of sanctions. Subsequently, Swehli participated in political talks, supported UN mediation efforts, and became President of the High State Council. The fact that the rival GNA and HoR participated in UN-led talks on ceasefire and formation of a national unity government evidences the political effectiveness of UN sanctions. Since the signing of the LPA in 2015, those opting out of the process have been stigmatized by a wide range of actors like the Arab League. It is impossible to assess whether or not the threat or the adoption of sanctions against spoilers persuaded more Libyan military commanders and politicians to participate in the peace talks. However, based on the few cases presented above, and on the behavior of other Libyan actors, the answer largely depends on the profile of the individual targeted. Sanctions effectiveness appears to be limited toward militia commanders lacking bank accounts, family, or properties abroad as well as travel habits and aspirations, while they have better prospects on individuals with political ambitions. According to diplomats who interacted with these politicians, most political figures want to avoid being designated. Therefore, their removal from the sanctions list can constitute a bargaining chip. This suggests that the application of sanctions is more suitable at later stages of mediation processes.
A Dual Principal and a Constrained Agent
The empirical analysis of UN sanctions and mediation during the 2011 revolution shows that the focus was overwhelmingly on sanctions, which achieved remarkable severity, and targeted only one party to the conflict. Coupled with the fact that they were imposed before UN mediation was launched, and that they soon became part of an explicit regime change agenda, this closed the space for mediation almost entirely. In sum, sanctions obstructed mediation. In this light, it is questionable that the UN ever considered mediation as a serious strategy to solve the 2011 conflict. The relentless military intervention by some of the P5 betrayed their lack of support for a mediated outcome, the avenue favored by other UNSC members and the Secretary-General. In practice, UN mediation efforts did not cease until the Libya Contact Group met in Istanbul in July 2011, two months before the conflict ended. Seen through the prism of institutional coherence, UN policies contradicted each other. The UNSC was divided in its approach to the crisis, but despite discrepancies over the invocation of R2P, it managed to reach consensus on the imposition of sanctions. Agreement visibly subsided over time. While Resolution 1970 imposing an initial round of sanctions was adopted unanimously, Resolution 1973 attracted ten positive votes only (one more than the bare minimum) with the notable abstentions of China, Russia, Brazil, Germany, and India. Sanctions supported regime change, whereas mediation pursued a mediated peaceful transition. The deliberate choice by one of the two principals to undercut the mandate given to the agent caused a mismatch between sanctions and mediation, giving rise to intrainstitutional incoherence.
During the 2014 Libyan civil war, the UN had an evident intention to link mediation and sanctions. In June 2015, four UNSC members proposed the listing of Othman Maliqta, a militia leader supporting Libya’s internationally recognized government, and Abdulrahman Swehli, a powerful politician supporting the rival Libya Dawn coalition, to discourage them from spoiling talks on a unity government. They hoped to “send a clear signal that spoilers of the political process will not be tolerated” and persuade more Libyan moderates to participate in the talks. However, the proposal was blocked by Russia and China. Nonetheless, UNSC’s formal agreement on designation criteria was still used by UN mediators to threaten spoilers. Between 2014 and 2016, UN mediators threatened with sanctions several individuals attempting to derail mediation, a threat that seems to have had some utility. In particular, the threat of sanctions against prominent politician Swehli who was obstructing UN mediation efforts changed his attitude to a more conciliatory stance. His example supports the argument that the threat of sanctions may be more effective than their actual imposition. Yet some UNSC members resented Leon’s activism in threatening sanctions, which they saw as interfering with their prerogatives. Furthermore, divisions within the UNSC allowed an unbridled competition among regional powers: Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan—a Council member in 2014/2015—supported General Haftar, in opposition to Turkey and Qatar. The UNSC’s failure to enforce the arms embargo and censure violators evidences, to this day, its inability to forge a common approach to the conflicts in Libya.
Our conceptual framework identified two likely sources of institutional incoherence: multiple principals, given that the UN mediator acts by delegation of the Secretary-General and the UNSC, and the collective nature of the UNSC as one of the principals for mediation and the sole UN sanctions-issuing authority. Our paired comparison points toward the collective nature of the UNSC as the sole origin of incoherence. In the 2011 revolution, the UNSC made use of its sanctions-issuing authority, which favored regime change rather than mediation. By contrast, in the 2014 Libyan civil war, diverging interests in the conflict prevented agreement on designations to advance mediation. In sum, the UNSC emerges as a collective principal that is often incapable of effectively aggregating preferences.
Finally, our analysis identifies one mediators’ unauthorized use of sanctions threats to spoilers. However, this instance does not fit into PA theory’s notion of agency slack as it does not result from misalignment with the principal’s interests. Instead, the agent deviates from their principal’s preferences in the interest of fulfilling their mandate of reaching a settlement. This introduces a nuance to the widespread assumption that agency slack results from a conflict of interest between agent and principal. The UNSC’s failure to threaten sanctions against spoilers, motivated by concerns of institutional hierarchy as well as by resistance from some P5 to target their local clients, deprived mediators from a potentially powerful tool.
Conclusion
Our study reveals that the relationship between UN sanctions and mediation is heavily influenced by preference heterogeneity within the UNSC. UN bodies lack robust and systematic institutional mechanisms to ensure complementary between sanctions and mediation mandates. However, incoherence does not emanate from the dispersion of competences among different UN actors. Instead, it is mainly attributable to the collective nature of the highly politicized UNSC, often characterized by internal divisions. During the 2011 revolution, sanctions—and military intervention—unequivocally closed the space for any mediation. By contrast, in the 2014-2015 civil war, threats of individual designations helped to bring parties to the negotiating table, although diverging interests among P5 members prevented their adoption. Our paired comparison suggests that sanctions can assist the mediation process under only two conditions. First, die UNSC members, and particularly the P5, who are key for the adoption of sanctions, must be aligned in support of UN mediation. Preference heterogeneity among Council members not only prevents the designation of peace spoilers, but also weakens the pressure on conflict parties to stop fighting and to seek a mediated outcome. Second, and equally important, the parties to the dispute are unlikely to pursue a deal unless the P5 compel regional powers to cease their assistance to opposing factions. Garnering their support thus emerges as the key priority for future mediators engaged in cases where, as in Libya, foreign powers exert considerable influence on conflict dynamics. These tentative findings seem applicable elsewhere. Diverging priorities among the P5 hampered mediation in Somalia between 2008 and 2010: the Council failed to make any designations to support the transitional agreement under Resolution 1844 (2008), whereas its April 2010 sanctions focused solely on one party (al-Shabaab), thereby prioritizing counterterrorism over mediation. The resignation in 2012 of Kofi Annan, the UN-Arab League joint special envoy for Syria, represents another case of failed mediation due to the escalating military campaign and “the clear lack of unity in the Security Council.”