You are using an outdated browser.
Please upgrade your browser
and improve your visit to our site.
Skip Navigation

Libya's Starring Role

Designated by the cohort of African states in the United Nations, Burkina Faso and Libya have been elected for two-year terms to the Security Council. Burkina Faso is a run-of-the-mill dictatorship, almost incomprehensibly poor, illiterate. Nothing special in this designation, But Libya is, well, Libya. Run as an unembarrassed tyranny by Col. Qaddafi, with a history of deftly directed terrorism, and paid for by an oil economy that was once lucrative and now has to have the lush resource refined outside the country, Libya has served as chair of the U.N. Human Rights Commission during its most egregious period. Of course, no one had any expectations of the Commission, as no one does for its, successor, the Human Rights Council. But the Security Council has real power which it usually misuses or under-uses. Look for Libya to star in both functions.