Meeting in Cairo, Egypt, on Monday 30 April, the Quartet for Libya (EU, United Nations, Arab League and African Union) gave its support to the organisation of elections in Libya in 2018.
In its joint declaration, the Quartet thus underlines "the importance of holding parliamentary and presidential elections in accordance with the requisite legal framework that must be enacted and approved for this purpose, including a constitutional framework and electoral law". It also stated that the elections should be held before the end of the year, in line with the UN Action Plan for Libya.
The EU, UN, African Union and Arab League say they are ready to coordinate their work to help the electoral process, including through the deployment of electoral assistance and/or observer missions, "to allow for the conduct of free, fair and credible elections". "The conduct of such elections requires a conducive political and security environment where all Libyan parties commit in advance to respect and abide by their results and voters are allowed to safely exercise their democratic rights throughout the country without intimidation or interference, including from armed groups, criminal networks and other non-sate actors", the Quartet for Libya states. To this end it says it has undertaken to sponsor "any confidence building measures" among Libyan stakeholders.
The four institutions also state that it is necessary to continue working on security issues, and hail the efforts aiming to unify the Libyan security apparatus and those deployed by Libya, Chad, Sudan and Niger to fight against cross-border insecurity. "We very much support the work of the Sahel countries, Libya's southern neighbours, to coordinate their actions of monitoring the border and any sort of trafficking", High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini told press, saying the EU was ready to support this work.
Underlining their support for the Libyan efforts to remove the threat these terrorist groups represent, the members of the Quartet highlight the urgent need to bring assistance for swift recovery to the regions recently liberated from so-called Islamic State. The Quartet also calls on all the Libyan stakeholders and institutions to cooperate actively in their longer term reconstruction. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)