New York— The UN Secretary-General António Guterres appointed on Friday Ms. Hanna Serwaa Tetteh of Ghana as his Special Representative for Libya and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL). This is while the Libyan people become increasingly and deeply distrustful of the UN’s strategy in their country.
She is the tenth appointed UN representative since 2011 and succeeds Abdoulaye Bathily of Senegal, who served until May 2024.
The UN’s press release said that the Secretary-General is grateful for Mr. Bathily’s leadership, as well as to Deputy Special Representative, Stephanie Koury, who led the Mission in the interim period as Officer-in-Charge.
Tetteh’s appointment will face challenges in Libya including the challenge of succeeding in her mission where the previous nine UN representatives failed. That is to help Libyans establish a unified government that is recognized and supported by the international community, with the aim of bringing stability and peace to the country.
Her predecessor resigned last in April 2024 after he arrived to the conclusion that neither the local competing political forces nor the foreign powers were helpful in ending the Libyan crisis. Bathily resigned from his post after he criticized the UN’s inability to support the political process in Libya.
However, the dangerous challenge she will immediately face is the Libyans’ distrust of the UN’s intentions toward Libya, especially after fifteen years of this world body’s cheer failure or unwillingness to facilitate a solution despite its claiming otherwise.
The Libyans’ distrust also comes from their deep belief that international and regional intervention in the internal affairs of their country usually undermines any local initiatives by which Libyans themselves may resolve their own differences.
Meanwhile, the UN’s press release maintains that “Ms. Tetteh brings to this position decades of experience at the national, regional and international levels, including most recently as the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for the Horn of Africa from 2022 until 2024. Prior to this, she was the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to the African Union and Head of the United Nations Office to the African Union (UNOAU) from 2018 to 2020, having earlier served as Director-General of the United Nations Office at Nairobi.”
Ms. Tetteh holds a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from the University of Ghana, Legon and after her post-graduate legal studies at the Ghana School of Law was called to the Bar in 1992. She is fluent in English, Hungarian and Fante.