Dialogue · Mediation · Consensus building · National reconciliation
Peace Makers – Libya is a Libyan institution working at the heart of dialogue and peacebuilding tracks. It specialises in managing high-level dialogue, mediation, consensus building, and supporting national reconciliation tracks.
Since its establishment, the institution has developed a presence in the spaces where politics meets society, dialogue meets mediation, and ideas meet practical initiatives — placing at the core of its work the building of bridges between Libyan parties, and the creation of safe and effective spaces for discussing the most complex national issues.
We do not see dialogue as merely a meeting between parties, but as a tool for creating understanding, managing difference, and producing sustainable solutions.
From this standpoint, Peace Makers – Libya brings together local expertise, a network of politicians, experts, academics, young people and civic actors, and international knowledge and experience — in order to develop Libyan-led tracks grounded in a deep understanding of the national context.
We aspire to a Libya that is stable, reconciled with itself, and able to manage its differences through dialogue and institutions — where diversity becomes a source of strength, and disagreements turn into opportunities for understanding and joint action.
We seek to contribute to building a more just, inclusive and sustainable society, in which the opportunity is open to all its components to take part in shaping its future.
Our mission is to design and manage spaces for high-level dialogue, to support mediation and consensus-building efforts, and to develop initiatives that address the roots of crises and open practical paths towards peace and stability.
We also work to connect political, civic, academic and youth elites, and to employ knowledge, experience and partnerships in developing applicable Libyan solutions.
The path of Peace Makers – Libya has not been a set of separate projects, but a gradual track in which experience, relationships and knowledge accumulated from one stage to the next. Every milestone came as a response to a need, and every project produced outcomes that laid the ground for the stage that followed.
Peace Makers – Libya began in 2015 as a Libyan initiative seeking to strengthen the culture of dialogue, mediation and reconciliation, and to open channels of communication between the different parties and components. The idea came from a conviction that peacebuilding starts by creating spaces that allow parties to listen to one another, understand their differences, and search for common ground.
Outcomes of this stage: Establishing a nucleus specialised in dialogue and mediation, building an initial network of political and social actors, and developing an approach to work grounded in dialogue and building understanding.
With the beginning of 2016, the initiative moved to a more organised stage and became a non-profit organisation that expanded its work in mediation between political and social parties. The focus was no longer on holding dialogue alone, but on designing and managing it and building the conditions that allow discussion to turn into understandings.
Outcomes of this stage: Accumulating practical experience in managing dialogue and mediation, widening the network of relationships, opening communication channels between distant parties, and developing the institution's standing as a body capable of facilitating sensitive dialogues.
As the Libyan division continued, the work of Peace Makers – Libya expanded into reconciliation and trust-building tracks between local components, in areas including the Nafusa Mountains, Tripoli and southern Libya. The work also extended to engaging institutions and political actors, including in the context of the work of the Constitution Drafting Assembly.
This stage focused on building bridges and restoring communication between parties whose capacity for joint work had been weakened by conflict and division.
Outcomes of this stage: Building a wider network of local and national relationships, accumulating field experience in reconciliation and managing difference, and creating new channels of communication and trust between a number of components and parties.
The “Libyan Social Contract” came as a natural development of the experience accumulated in dialogue and reconciliation. In August 2018, the institution led a process in which more than 1,250 political, social and economic figures and leaders took part, with the aim of creating a broad national space for discussing the fundamental issues shaping the future of the state and society.
The goal was not merely to gather participants, but to provide a multi-party space for formulating shared visions and searching for ground that could be built upon in managing national differences.
Outcomes of this stage: Producing the “Libyan Social Contract” document, building a broad national network of participants, and developing experience in managing wide multi-party dialogue — which later formed an important asset in dialogue and reconciliation tracks.
With the outbreak of war in April 2019, Libya entered a new phase of conflict, which pushed Peace Makers – Libya to intensify its efforts in dialogue and mediation and its engagement with a number of influential political parties.
At this stage, the work moved from building understandings in a turbulent political environment to managing high-level dialogues and contacts amid open conflict, with a focus on keeping communication channels open and not allowing dialogue to break down.
Outcomes of this stage: Expanding the network of political contacts, accumulating experience in managing high-level dialogue during crises, and developing a deeper understanding of the roots and dynamics of the conflict — which paved the way for moving from responding to the war towards thinking about Libya's future.
The “Future of Libya” project was born out of the need to move beyond crisis management towards thinking about what comes after it, particularly after the political deadlock the country witnessed following the failure of the December 2021 elections. The project was therefore designed to combine political, societal and cultural tracks, on the basis that building the future cannot rely on the political track alone, but also needs the rebuilding of trust and social bonds.
The project comprised three main tracks: the political track, the youth track, and “Tende for Peace”, with each track addressing a different aspect of the challenges of division.
Outcomes of this stage: Developing specialised tracks for dialogue and action, expanding the network of communication between regions and components, and producing political, youth and cultural initiatives that became a foundation for later stages of the institution's work.
The political track within the “Future of Libya” project focused on analysing the roots of political tensions and looking at the crisis as a set of interconnected issues requiring parallel treatment, rather than addressing them from a single angle.
Through this track, an approach later known as the “Four Tracks Initiative” developed, offering a vision based on the multiplicity of tracks and their complementarity in addressing political issues.
Outcomes of this stage: Formulating the “Four Tracks Initiative”, developing a more comprehensive approach to political dialogue, and widening the discussion on possible paths for addressing the crisis.
The youth track came in response to the deep impact that years of division and conflict had left on relationships between young people across Libyan regions. The track focused on rebuilding communication channels and creating spaces in which young people interact away from political and regional polarisation.
In this track young people were not merely beneficiaries of the project, but part of the process of building bridges and creating dialogue about the future.
Outcomes of this stage: Reopening communication channels between youth groups from different regions, expanding the network of young people connected to peacebuilding efforts, and creating new spaces for dialogue and exchange.
“Tende for Peace” carried the idea of building bridges into the cultural and artistic field, on the basis that peace is not built by politics alone. The project used music as a means of expressing Libyan diversity and highlighting the plurality of cultures, languages and regions as components of national identity.
In doing so, the project added a human and cultural dimension to the institution's experience in peacebuilding.
Outcomes of this stage: Producing an artistic work reflecting Libyan diversity, employing culture and music as tools of communication, and widening the concept of peacebuilding to include social and cultural spaces alongside political ones.
After years of building relationships and experience in dialogue and mediation, the need arose for a platform bringing a larger number of political and civil forces into a single space. In 2023, Peace Makers – Libya launched the “Forum of Political and Civil Forces” with the participation of more than 60 political parties, alongside professional unions, civil society organisations, and figures and actors from diverse backgrounds.
The forum represented a move from initiatives with defined tracks to a wider space for political and civic dialogue, drawing on the network the institution had accumulated over its years of work.
Outcomes of this stage: Establishing a wider platform for political and civic dialogue, expanding the network of participants, and shaping a common space for discussion about Libya's future — enabling the move to a stage of developing more comprehensive initiatives.
The “Multi-Track Initiative” came as the culmination of accumulated experience in designing solution and dialogue tracks, and within the work of the Forum of Political and Civil Forces. The initiative proceeded from a vision based on addressing the Libyan crisis through a set of parallel and interconnected tracks, rather than confining treatment to a single track.
Outcomes of this stage: Formulating a Libyan multi-track initiative, bringing together a number of visions and approaches to addressing the political crisis, and presenting the initiative to the United Nations Support Mission in Libya.
Designing and facilitating dialogue tracks between political, social and tribal actors.
Mediating local conflicts and supporting reconciliation and settlement agreements.
Producing reports and policy papers that inform decision makers.
Building the capacity of young leaders and running the youth platform.
Strengthening municipalities and local participation mechanisms.
Workshops and training on conflict transformation and non-violence.
What distinguishes the path of Peace Makers – Libya is that no project was an end in itself; each was the beginning of the one that followed.
The experience of dialogue produced expertise in mediation; mediation produced networks of relationships; those networks led to wider spaces for reconciliation; from them came the Social Contract; then the conditions of war led to the Future of Libya project, from which the political, youth and cultural tracks branched out, all the way to the Forum of Political and Civil Forces and the Multi-Track Initiative.
And so the path continues — an approach through which we keep developing the role of Peace Makers – Libya as a platform for strategic dialogue and peacebuilding.
We welcome partnerships with institutions and youth initiatives working to strengthen civil peace in Libya.
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