Libya

Libya is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. Libya has the 10th-largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world.

The largest city and capital, Tripoli, is located in western Libya and contains over one million of Libya’s six million people. The other large city is Benghazi, which is located in eastern Libya.

At least two political bodies claim to be the government of Libya. The Council of Deputies is internationally recognized as the legitimate government, but it does not hold territory in the capital, Tripoli, instead meeting in the Cyrenaica city of Tobruk. Meanwhile, the 2014 General National Congress purports to be the legal continuation of the General National Congress, elected in the 2012 Libyan General National Congress election and dissolved following the June 2014 elections but then reconvened by a minority of its members. The Supreme Court in the Libya Dawn and General National Congress-controlled Tripoli declared the Tobruk government unconstitutional in November 2014, but the internationally recognized government has rejected the ruling as made under threat of violence. Parts of Libya are outside of either government’s control, with various Islamist, rebel, and tribal militias administering some cities and areas. The United Nations is sponsoring peace talks between the Tobruk and Tripoli-based factions. An agreement to form a unified interim government was signed on 17 December 2015. Under the terms of the agreement, a nine-member Presidency Council and a seventeen-member interim Government of National Accord would be formed, with a view to holding new elections within two years. The leaders of the new government, called the Government of National Accord (GNA), arrived in Tripoli on April 5, 2016. Since then the GNC, one of the two rival governments, has disbanded to support the new GNA.