Latest response to the situation in Libya

Following recent events in Libya, the Stabilisation Unit has been in the thick of it, supporting a co-ordinated UK Government response. From deploying a core member of staff to the Libyan/Egypt border as part of the initial humanitarian and stabilisation response team, to facilitating cross-Whitehall planning meetings with a few hours notice, the Unit’s newly formed Libya Country Team has offered assistance and responded to requests from across Government.

In addition to deploying a stabilisation planner to the Libya/Egypt border, we’ve deployed a migration and stabilisation expert from our Civilian Stabilisation Group to Tunisia. His job will be to monitor refugee flows following a request for support from the British Ambassador there. We’re also ready to deploy more of our 1,000 pool of experts (the Civilian Stabilisation Group) if requested.

Here in London, the team’s planning experts have been shaping Whitehall thinking on stabilisation, putting together papers for the rest of Government on the stabilisation challenges and options for UK support and are now working on a paper about the options for a multilateral stabilisation approach. Stabilisation Unit staff have also provided surge support to DFID’s crisis response team, (some within an hour of the initial request) and we’ve now recruited civil servants from the cadre to fill these posts for the longer term.

To help us and the rest of Whitehall in our work, we’ve recruited a Libya expert into the Unit who is providing in-depth country knowledge and insight. He, along with experts from the Economist’s Intelligence Unit and the Libya Human and Political Development Forum, was one of our speakers at our cross-Government seminar about the February 17 uprising, held last week.

In addition to working on Libya, the Stabilisation Unit is also actively supporting cross-government planning and analysis for the rest of the  Middle East and North Africa