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Libyan Politicians Call for Int’l Sanctions against Obstructionists in Upcoming Elections

A Libyan registers his data to obtain a voter’s card inside a polling station in Tripoli (AFP)
A Libyan registers his data to obtain a voter’s card inside a polling station in Tripoli (AFP)
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Libyan Politicians Call for Int’l Sanctions against Obstructionists in Upcoming Elections

A Libyan registers his data to obtain a voter’s card inside a polling station in Tripoli (AFP)
A Libyan registers his data to obtain a voter’s card inside a polling station in Tripoli (AFP)

A number of politicians in Libya are demanding that those obstructing elections face international sanctions, while others are calling for election resistors to be held accountable by local law.

“The international community is required to intervene and punish anyone who wants to violate the right of the Libyan people to express their will to hold elections,” said Libyan lawmaker Mohammed Amer al-Abbani.

Abbani pointed out “it may be difficult to prosecute obstructionists locally, so the international community must be called upon to intervene to impose appropriate penalties.”

The Libyan conference in Paris on Friday had voiced its support for upcoming elections in Libya.

“We affirm that individuals or entities, inside or outside of Libya, who might attempt to obstruct, undermine, manipulate or falsify the electoral process and the political transition will be held accountable and may be designated by the UNSC Sanctions Committee in accordance with UNSC resolution 2571 (2021),” said the conference’s final communique.

Abbani considered that “reliance on the role of the international community in protecting the elections comes within the framework of its legal and moral commitment.”

He stressed that the international community needs to help Libyans in “establishing their political system and building their state.’

Abbani pointed out that “the real bet is for a widely influential popular movement to secure the elections from any targeting attempt.”

For his part, Khaled al-Meshri, the head of the Tripoli-based Supreme Council of State, had called all Libyans to demonstrate before the Electoral Commission to voice their rejection of upcoming elections.

He also urged voters and candidates not to participate in the electoral process.

Meanwhile, Libyan lawmaker Ziad Daghim considered that it is better to subjugate “those obstructing Libyan elections to the national judiciary.”

Reminding that Libya is a sovereign country, Daghim refused relying “on any external party, whether the UN or any other party to punish those accused of obstructing the elections.”

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Displaced Syrians Who Have Returned Home Face a Fragile Future, Says UN Refugees Chief

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
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Displaced Syrians Who Have Returned Home Face a Fragile Future, Says UN Refugees Chief

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Friday that more than two million Syrian refugees and internally displaced people have returned home since the fall of the government of Bashar al-Assad in December.

Speaking during a visit to Damascus that coincided with World Refugee Day, Grandi described the situation in Syria as “fragile and hopeful” and warned that the returnees may not remain if Syria does not get more international assistance to rebuild its war-battered infrastructure.

“How can we make sure that the return of the Syrian displaced or refugees is sustainable, that people don’t move again because they don’t have a house or they don’t have a job or they don’t have electricity?” Grandi asked a small group of journalists after the visit, during which he met with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and spoke with returning refugees.

“What is needed for people to return, electricity but also schools, also health centers, also safety and security,” he said.

Syria’s near 14-year civil war, which ended last December with the ouster of Assad in a lightning opposition offensive, killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.

Grandi said that 600,000 Syrians have returned to the country since Assad’s fall, and about another 1.5 million internally displaced people returned to their homes in the same period.

However, there is little aid available for the returnees, with multiple crises in the region -- including the new Israel-Iran war -- and shrinking support from donors. The UNHCR has reduced programs for Syrian refugees in neighboring countries, including healthcare, education and cash support for hundreds of thousands in Lebanon.

“The United States suspended all foreign assistance, and we were very much impacted, like others, and also other donors in Europe are reducing foreign assistance,” Grandi said, adding: “I tell the Europeans in particular, be careful. Remember 2015, 2016 when they cut food assistance to the Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, the Syrians moved toward Europe.”

Some have also fled for security reasons since Assad's fall. While the situation has stabilized since then, particularly in Damascus, the new government has struggled to extend its control over all areas of the country and to bring a patchwork of former opposition groups together into a national army.

Grandi said the UNHCR has been in talks with the Lebanese government, which halted official registration of new refugees in 2015, to register the new refugees and “provide them with basic assistance.”

“This is a complex community, of course, for whom the chances of return are not so strong right now,” he said. He said he had urged the Syrian authorities to make sure that measures taken in response to the attacks on civilians “are very strong and to prevent further episodes of violence.”

The Israel-Iran war has thrown further fuel on the flames in a region already dealing with multiple crises. Grandi noted that Iran is hosting millions of refugees from Afghanistan who may now be displaced again.

The UN does not yet have a sense of how many people have fled the conflict between Iran and Israel, he said.

“We know that some Iranians have gone to neighboring countries, like Azerbaijan or Armenia, but we have very little information. No country has asked for help yet,” he said. “And we have very little sense of the internal displacement, because my colleagues who are in Iran - they’re working out of bunkers because of the bombs.”