The African Union's Mediation Mandate and the Libyan Conflict (2011)

Abstract

The African Union's mediation mandate for the Libya crisis of 2011 derived from the organization's Constitutive Act and the United Nations Charter. The African Union activated this constitutional mandate by designing a roadmap to end the crisis peacefully. However, the roadmap's incompatibility with the UN Security Council mandate on the use of force and its lack of clarity on the future of Muamar Gaddafi discredited it in the eyes of the rebels and the United Nations. The African Union obtained a mandate to mediate from Gaddafi but not from the rebels, and its mediation proved ill-designed to deal with the crisis. These factors contributed to the failure of the mediation effort.