UN mission ends decade of deployment in Mali
Bamako, Mali – AFP
The UN mission in Mali ended a decade of deployment in the crisis-wracked country on Sunday, meeting a December 31 deadline agreed after Mali’s military leaders ordered it to leave.
The UN stabilisation mission (MINUSMA) had been in place since 2013, and its withdrawal is igniting fears that fighting will intensify between troops and armed factions.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement published Sunday that MINUSMA had completed its agreed withdrawal by December 31, 2023.
The UN chief praised the missions’s “key role” in protecting civilians and supporting the peace process in Mali, which is in the grip of violence.
He also recognised the work of MINUSMA in “ensuring respect for the ceasefire in the context of the 2015 peace and reconciliation agreement” between Bamako and northern rebel groups, as well as its efforts towards restoring state authority.
Mali’s ruling junta, which seized power in 2020, in June demanded the departure of the mission, which for a decade maintained around 15,000 soldiers and police in the country.
Guterres paid tribute to the “311 MINUSMA personnel who lost their lives and the more than 700 who were injured in the cause of peace”.
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