The United Nations has announced that the Special Advisor to the Secretary General on Libya and ex-acting head of UNSMIL, Stephanie Williams, will leave its assigned post in Libya at the end of July.
The UN spokesman Farhan Haq said UNSMIL Officer-in-Charge and Mission Coordinator Raisedon Zenenga will step in until a new envoy and head of mission is announced.
Haq said that they are trying as soon as possible to name a temporary representative to carry out the tasks that Williams is doing, noting that they have no one to name at the present time.
According to Haq, the Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, said Williams did an amazing job, and the UN was hoping that she could extend her term beyond July, but it turned out that she had other commitments.
The UN spokesman indicated that the UN will continue to search for a successor to Williams while building on her achievements, pointing to what he called the enormous amount of work she has done to ensure that Libya has unified institutions and that its bodies work together.
He explained that there would still be ups and downs in those efforts, but Williams did everything anyone could do to try to find solutions.
Williams worked as Deputy Special Representative of the UN Support Mission from 2018-2020, then Acting Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya from 2020-2021, after which she was appointed as Adviser to the Secretary-General of the United Nations in December 2021.
