UN extends African Union mission in Somalia
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Staff reporter GAROWE ONLINE
- Posted On 22-12-2021, 06:55AM
NEW YORK - The African Union Mission in Somalia [AMISOM] will stay for three more months in Somalia, following a resolution by the United Nations Security Council [UNSC], which took a vote on Tuesday evening over the fate of the peacekeepers.
The vote, UNSC said, will allow the African Union and Somalia to negotiate until March 31, 2022, over the future of peacekeeping troops. The mandate was supposed to expire on December 31, 2021, upon full implementation of the Somali Transition Plan [STP].
The decision reached under Resolution 2614/2021 was adopted on Tuesday night, granting the peacekeeping force the needed certainty as Somalia and the African Union haggle on whether to completely withdraw or rebrand to an AU-UN hybrid mission.
The UN Security Council has authorized “the Member States of the African Union to maintain the deployment of the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) until 31 March 2022,” states the resolution.
Further, it “authorizes Amisom to take all necessary measures in full compliance with participating States’ obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and in full respect of the sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence, and unity of Somalia, to carry out its mandate, as set out.”
While African Union is for the joint mission with the United Nations in Somalia, Mogadishu has repeatedly opposed the move, instead of calling for full implementation of the STP. However, after engaging the AU delegation in November, the federal government of Somalia seemed to have embraced a hybrid mission.
Tuesday's resolution means Amisom will continue with its operations against the Al-Shabaab militant group as it awaits a formal deal between Mogadishu and the African Union on whether the Mission should exit, restructure, or be reorganized as a hybrid AU-UN force with civilian components.
Dr. Hawa Noor Zitzmann, a Kenyan COFUND Ph.D. Fellow in Global Governance and Regional Integration at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences told The EastAfrican the three months could provide for a way forward and clarity on the future of Amisom.
“It is important for the future of Amisom to be determined because it is expiring in about two weeks.
“Surely it would be a bit too exaggerated to claim that Amisom has been very successful in its 14 years in Somalia.
“However, it has also managed to push back al-Shabaab which is also its main mandate and so withdrawing instantly as called for by the FGS [Federal government of Somalia) risks gains by al-Shabaab and a free-fall back to the post 1991-like conditions of anarchy."
Some of the AMISOM troops contributing nations include Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Djibouti, and Burundi. There are a total of close to 22,000 peacekeepers in Somalia paid by International partners among them the European Union and the United Nations.
GAROWE ONLINE
