Libyan Independence and the United Nations by Adrian Pelt
As Libya navigates its rocky transition, understanding Libya’s historical experience of the constitutional drafting process is imperative. Chronicling the events that took place leading to the creation of an independent Libyan state, Adrian Pelt’s Libyan Independence and the United Nations: A Case of Planned Decolonization narrates the process of decolonization and offers the most detailed analysis available of the constitutional drafting process that occurred. This exhaustive volume highlights the extensive process undertaken by Pelt to seek the input of Libya’s towns, regions, and tribes into what would become the country’s foundational constitution.
The author, Adrian Pelt, was appointed High Commissioner for Libya by the UN in 1949. Pelt initiated the discussions which brought together representatives from all parts of Libya to contribute to the drafting of the Libyan Constitution through the National Constituent Assembly.
This seminal work was originally published in 1970 by Yale University Press and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This new edition, published by Kalam Research and Media (KRM) in association with the Centre for Libyan Studies at the Libya Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS), and with permission from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was completely re-typeset in order to make it more accessible for legal experts, policymakers, and historians of Libyan affairs.
About the Author
The author, Adrian Pelt (1892–1981), a Dutch journalist, joined the Dutch Government in Exile in London during WWII, following the German invasion in May 1940. He was a member of the Dutch Delegation at the UN Formation Conference in San Francisco during the Summer of 1945 and became one of the three direct reports to the first Secretary-General of the UN, the Norwegian Trygve Lie in 1946. On 10 December 1949, Adrian Pelt was nominated High Commissioner for Libya and charged with crafting an independent nation-state from English-governed Cyrenaica and Tripolitania and French-governed Fezzan no later than 1 January 1952. From his appointment until Libyan independence he was responsible for governing Libya and assisting with the drafting of the Libyan constitution. On 24 December 1951, Adrian Pelt transferred his powers to King Idris. Upon the completion of his Libyan assignment, and until his retirement in 1957, he remained with the UN in New York and Geneva.