In Libya, the education follows a 9-3 system, where the primary school lasts for 9 years and the secondary school for 3 years. According to UNESCO, 10.5% of the population over 15 years were illiterate in 2011 (4% of men; 17% of women).

• Agooddir: Features recent history of Libya starting from the second world war to 21st century.

Basic education

In Libya, there is no formal distinction between children and secondary school. In principle, the nine-year elementary school is free and compulsory.

• TOPSCHOOLSINTHEUSA: Visit to find a full list of ACT testing locations in Libya. Also covers exam dates of 2021 and 2022 for American College Test within Libya.

Higher education

Higher education is offered at a number of vocational schools, colleges and universities. The first Libyan university was established in Benghazi in 1955. In 2010/2011, more than 340,000 students were registered in the country.

• Countryaah: Get latest country flag of Libya and find basic information about Libya including population, religion, languages, etc.

2002 Libya assumes responsibility for Lockerbie and UN raises its sanctions

In early 2001, a Scottish court acquitted Libyan Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah of taking part in the assault on the Pan Am plane, which was blown into the air over Lockerbie in 1988. The other accused, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was sentenced to life imprisonment. In January 2002, Tripoli tried to appeal the verdict, but this was rejected, prompting Khaddafi to accuse him of being under pressure from Washington and London and not having sufficient evidence. In August, however, Libya announced the UN Security Council that the state assumed responsibility for the Lockerbie disaster, giving Libya $ 2.7 billion. US $ for distribution among the families of the dead – equivalent to DKK 1 million. US $ per killed on board. This caused French dissatisfaction, as compensation for France in a similar case the year before had been significantly lower. In September, the UN Security Council raised 13 votes for its sanctions against the country. France and the United States abstained, and the United States continued its own sanctions.

Despite opposition from the United States, in January 2003, Libya took over the chairmanship of the UN Commission on Human Rights. In December, the government announced that it was abandoning all weapons of mass destruction development programs.

In March 2004, Britain’s Tony Blair traveled to Tripoli to meet Khaddafi. He thus became the first British Prime Minister in 60 years to visit Libya. In April, the United States raised its sanctions against the country. The North American oil industry played an important role in this. Washington declared that North American companies could once again do business in Libya after the country abandoned its weapons of mass destruction program. The United States also lifted its opposition to the accession of Libya to the WTO. The superpower had imposed trade and economic sanctions on Libya in 1986 after putting it on a list of countries supporting terrorism. In June, the two countries resumed diplomatic relations. The message was given by US Deputy Foreign Minister William Burns during his trip to Tripoli, where he met with Khaddafi and the Libyan government. The United States had closed its embassy in the country in 1980 following attacks in Lebanon against two French missions.

In August, Libya agreed to pay $ 35 million. US $ in compensation to the victims of the bomb attack against a nightclub in Berlin in 1986. Germany received with benevolence the compensation to the German and Turkish victims of the attack, which cost 3 lives and 200 wounded. In January, Tripoli had also entered into an agreement to compensate the families of those killed following the bomb attack on a French Saharan passenger plane in 1989.

In the first 40-year tender for oil and gas exploration, completed in January 2005, the biggest winners were North American companies. At the second invitation to tender in October, it was Asian and European companies that ran most contracts.

In December, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence against the accused doctors who were made responsible for the infection of Libyan children.

Denmark’s anti-Muslim campaign that began with Jutland Post drawings in the fall of 2005 led to violent demonstrations in Libya in February 2006 that killed at least 10 people.

Libyan independence

The territories of Tripolitania, Kyrenaika and Fezzan became independent as the United Kingdom of Libya on December 24, 1951, and Muhammad al-Idris was, in accordance with the new constitution, inaugurated as a monarch at a ceremony in Benghazi, after returning from his close thirty years of exile in Egypt.

Libya was, from independence, a federation of Tripolitania, Kyrenaika and Fezzan. They each had their own parliament and governing council, as well as their own state administrations – in addition to the joint Libyan National Assembly and the government. The country got two alternate capitals, Tripoli and Benghazi, and three provincial centers, Tripoli, Benghazi and Sebha. In 1963, this structure was replaced by a united state – the Kingdom of Libya – divided into ten provinces, with one central government. The Libyan parliament consisted of a House of Representatives in which seats were distributed among the provinces according to census and a Senate with eight members from each province; the king appointed half of the senators.

After the first election, in 1952, the parties were wound up, and later banned. Parliamentary representatives were then appointed by the government, and tribal affiliation and loyalty to the royal house became more important than ideology and politics. Thus, the 1952 elections were the first and only free elections in Libya before the uprising in 2011, with the subsequent elections in 2012. The king’s power was considerable, and the form of government – as well as Idris’ personal reluctance to be head of state – increased the influence of the court, which was dominated by a tribal-anchored elite from Kyrenaika. After an attack on a close associate in 1954, King Benghazi left and settled in Tobruk, retiring even more from the public.

Libya had become an independent state through solutions directed by the great powers, where their own interests weighed heavily. Independence was not won through a political struggle based on ideology or other unifying ground. The federal structure invited opposition between the three provinces. The king sought to develop a Libyan national feeling associated with the monarchy as an institution, but was himself from the Sanusi order and Kyrenaika, and gathered only limited popular support.

Libya remained a poor and underdeveloped society for several years, dependent on foreign financial and technical assistance, especially from the UK and the US as well as the UN. British and US aid was linked to the two countries’ leasing of military bases in Libya; it was not until the 1960s that oil exports became the main source of income. Exploration for oil began in 1940, but was then prevented by the war. After exploration in the mid-1950s, the first oil was shipped in 1961; Libya joined the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1962.

Libya was admitted as a member of the Arab League in 1953. During the liberation war in Algeria, Libyan territory was used to carry weapons from Egypt and Turkey to the resistance movement. At the same time, the Libyan government rejected France’s requests for bases in Fezzan. The relationship with Italy was clarified in 1956, with financial assistance and the return of Italian property. Increasing opposition to foreign bases led to riots in 1964, and Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser demanded assurances that these would not be used for attacks against Arab states in war with Israel.. Parliament agreed to terminate the base agreements, which led to the king trying to abdicate. The crisis was averted by the UK announcing its intention to leave its bases in Tripolitania in 1966, retaining only a minor force in Kyrenaika. Libya did not participate in the Six Day War against Israel in 1967, but Israel’s attacks on its Arab neighbors led to riots in Tripoli and Benghazi, where mobs also attacked Jewish and Jewish, as well as American and British, property.

Oil revenues combined with the constitutional change that made Libya a united state in 1963 enabled a comprehensive plan, with increased public investment. Equally lacking was social development, and distortions of rising state revenues, among the causes of the military coup on September 1, 1969. Another was the king’s Western-oriented policy in a time of strong Arab nationalism. A third was the widespread public corruption.

There was a group of younger, radical officers who seized power in 1969. The coup makers were inspired by the free officers of Egypt and their leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. The Libyan officers did as their Egyptian role models: deposed the king and abolished the monarchy, and Libya was made a republic. A “revolutionary council” took over the country, with Muammar al-Gaddafi as leader.

Gaddafi himself was deposed and killed during the Libya war in 2011.