There are countries where being a woman in power is difficult and then there is Libya, a nation fractured by a decade of civil war, governed by rival factions, and deeply resistant to the idea that a woman could sit at the table where its future was decided.

It is in this same environment, in March 2021, that Najla Mangoush became Libya's first female Minister of Foreign Affairs since the country's independence in 1951.

She did not step in gently, and was very vocal with her office. Within weeks of her appointment, she was calling on Turkey to withdraw its troops and mercenaries from Libyan soil, a demand that brought immediate and vicious backlash.

She faced different attacks and threats and it would have been right for someone like her to have softened and retreated into the safer corners of her role.

But Najla Mangoush stayed exactly where she was and kept speaking.

Her story is not a comfortable one. It does not end with a triumph arc and a standing ovation. It ends—at least for now—in exile in London, dismissed from office under circumstances that remain bitterly contested.

But to tell only that ending is to miss everything that came before it, and everything it cost her to get there.

Najla Mangoush is not a cautionary tale. She is a portrait of what courage looks like when the stakes are not abstract.

From Benghazi's Courtrooms to Washington's Peace Institutes

Born and raised in Benghazi, eastern Libya, Najla Mangoush is the daughter of Dr. Muhammad Abdullah Al-Mangoush, a well-known cardiologist and hematologist in the city and the niece of Yousef Al-Mangoush, one of the most prominent Libyan army officers of the previous era.

She studied law at the University of Garyounis in Benghazi, graduating in 2009, and went on to practise as a criminal lawyer in the city's courts.

She also earned a master's degree in Criminal Law from the same university. Then came February 2011, the revolution that would tear Libya apart and reshape the rest of her life.

When the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi began, Najla did not watch from the sidelines. She worked as a media activist, communicating with foreign press to report what was happening on the ground in Benghazi.

She then joined the National Transitional Council headed by Mustafa Abdel Jalil, serving as head of its Public Engagement Unit, a role that brought civil society organisations and decision-makers into structured dialogue at one of the most chaotic moments in Libyan history.

She furthered her studies on a Fulbright Scholarship, earning her MA in Conflict and Peace Management from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia, and later her PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University.

Between her degrees, she served as Program Officer for Peacebuilding and Traditional Law at the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution in Arlington, and as Libya country representative for the U.S. Institute of Peace.

She was not just studying conflict on paper . She had lived it, documented it, and was now building the academic scaffolding to understand and eventually dismantle it.

850 Days at the Helm of a Country on Fire

On March 15, 2021, Najla Mangoush was appointed Foreign Minister of Libya in Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh's Government of National Unity, becoming the first Libyan woman to hold the position in seventy years of national history, and only the fourth Arab woman to serve as foreign minister in the Arab world.

Libya in 2021 was not a unified country. It was a nation split between rival governments in Tripoli and Benghazi, controlled in pockets by armed factions loyal to different foreign backers—Turkey, Russia, the UAE, Egypt—each with their own economic and geopolitical interests in Libyan soil.

It was in this context that Najla brought a diplomat's language and a peacebuilder's instinct. She engaged the UN, the US, the UK, the UAE, meeting Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UN Secretary General António Guterres in Berlin.

She wore a Palestinian keffiyeh while receiving a US Assistant Secretary of State—a small but pointed gesture that said she would not pretend the region's politics did not exist.

In November 2021, the Presidential Council suspended her on charges of carrying out foreign policy without coordinating with the council.

Prime Minister Dbeibeh rejected the suspension, asserting that only he had the authority to appoint or dismiss his ministers.

She survived that crisis and kept working. She continued to advocate for the withdrawal of all foreign forces and mercenaries, a position that made her powerful enemies domestically and internationally.

In December 2021, the BBC named her to its 100 Women list, recognising her work building links with civil society organisations in a country where civil society had nearly been destroyed.

In March 2022, the U.S. State Department awarded her the International Women of Courage Award, one of the most prestigious recognitions given to women who demonstrate exceptional courage and leadership in the face of adversity. She accepted both honours without softening the positions that had made her a target.

The Meeting in Rome and the Price of Diplomacy

On August 27, 2023, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen announced publicly that he had met with Najla Mangoush in Rome, the first publicly disclosed high-level encounter between officials from Libya and Israel, two countries with no diplomatic relations and a 1957 Libyan law that makes dealings with Israel punishable by up to nine years in prison.

The announcement detonated across Libya and protests erupted in Tripoli, Misrata, and al-Zawiya. Dbeibeh's residence was set on fire. Roads were blocked.

The foreign ministry issued a statement calling the meeting unplanned and informal and as a result of that on August 28, 2023, she was dismissed. That same day, she fled Libya—first to Turkey, then to London, where her family already lived, out of fear for her safety.

She has remained there since, continuing to speak, to give interviews, to engage the international community—even after reports surfaced of a phone call she made to a Greek official from exile, prompting speculation that she was still quietly influencing Libyan foreign policy from London.

What happened to Najla Mangoush is a reminder, sharp and unsparing, of what women in fragile states risk when they occupy spaces that powerful men believe belong to them.

She was a lawyer who became a peacebuilder who became the face of a broken country's engagement with the world. She was rewarded with suspension, dismissal, protests calling for her imprisonment, and exile.

And still, she speaks. Still, she engages. Still, she insists that the story of Libya's future must be told with women at the table, not as footnotes to the decisions of men with guns.