To restore peace and fight against terrorism in Africa, Guterres has called for the deployment of a robust African force with a UN mandate.
Instead of peacekeeping missions in some African countries, UN Secretary-General António Guterres is calling for “a robust peace enforcement and counter-terrorism force.” UN forces have come under fire for their ineffectiveness in some African theatres of operation.
In Africa, UN peacekeeping missions are often considered ineffective due to the lack of robustness of their mandate. This is for example the case in Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where stabilisation missions are operating. In a press conference on Monday 19 December in New York, the UN Secretary General acknowledged the limitations of some peacekeeping missions.
“We are seeing situations where we have peacekeeping operations where really there is no peace to keep,” Mr Guterres admitted. Given such a state of affairs, “it is easy to manipulate the population” by saying “here are the troops, they are not capable of fighting against terrorist organisations or movements like the M23 in the DRC.”
Ecoforce
This fervent wish of the UN Secretary General coincides with the declared ambition of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to create an intervention force against terrorism and coups d’état.
The worsening security situation in the Sahel had motivated the decision of the West African heads of state on 4 December to create a regional anti-terrorist force that will also have a mandate to “restore constitutional order wherever it is threatened in the sub-region.”
Following this instruction, the chiefs of staff of the member countries of ECOWAS met on Monday 19 December in Bissau to concretise the establishment of this force which, according to the Guinea-Bissau Minister of Foreign Affairs, Suzi Barbosa, will be called Ecoforce. But the funding mechanism of this intervention force of ECOWAS is not yet defined.
AC/cgd/lb/abj/APA