While the year began with promising successes for facilitating a national dialogue process during the UN-led Berlin Process, it quickly turned to the opposite with an escalation of violence throughout the country. As international involvement in the fighting increased, the situation on the ground only became more complicated to resolve. As hardship worsened for the civilian population and the economic potential of the resource-rich country was undermined, a reconciliation process was urgently needed during the past year that also addresses political grievances. The promising successes in the recent reconciliation talks, which are taking place at the political, economic and security levels, give much hope for the year ahead.
In 2020, we established a new format with the monthly reports, which provide up-to-date and monthly coverage of the most important political, economic and social developments in Libya. In this way, we want to contribute to broadening perspectives and, above all, shed light on the internal Libyan dynamics. Based on existing KAS-PolDiMed formats such as the Libya Brief and the Libya Task Force, we believe it is necessary to underline the importance of continuing and enabling a national dialogue process in the spirit of the UN-led Berlin Process for the coming year. So for Germany, this was a crucial year in which important directions were set thanks to the country’s multidimensional diplomatic efforts.
Nevertheless, it is essential to emphasise the need for a Libyan-led and Libyan-owned process in order to move forward and once again become a stable and prosperous country for the citizens in Libya. Therefore, looking at past events, what happened «inside Libya» can enlighten future actions, what can be achieved in 2021.
We hope that this annual review will give our readers a better picture of the dynamics and multiple dimensions of the many challenges, but also opportunities, that Libya will face in the coming year 2021. We will continue to closely follow developments in 2021 and report back to our readers on a monthly basis.
