UN mission in Mali comes to end following Security Council vote
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The mission has been operative in Mali for a decade.
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In this image taken during an official visit organized by the Malian army to the town of Konna, some 680 kilometers (430 miles) north of Mali's capital Bamako, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013, Malian soldiers stand on the back of a pickup truck. (AP)
A decade-old "peacekeeping mission" to Mali was terminated by the UN Security Council on Friday after the country's military junta demanded that the troops leave.
A resolution passed by the Security Council with a unanimous vote will begin the immediate winding down of the MINUSMA mission, which was launched in 2013 to stop an alleged terrorist takeover.
After shocking the Security Council two weeks prior by labeling the UN mission a "failure" and calling for its immediate termination, the vote was held two weeks later.
Mali's relations with the United Nations have deteriorated sharply since a 2020 coup "brought to power a military regime that also severed defense cooperation with France, the former colonial power."
"We deeply regret the transitional government's decision to abandon Minusma and the harm this will bring to the Malian people," senior US diplomat Jeffrey DeLaurentis told the Security Council. However, he claimed that the United States supported the resolution because it agreed with the withdrawal timeline.
According to long-standing UN policy, a similar mission with alleged "peacekeeping" intents requires the host nation's consent.
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This comes after a vote by the Security Council to end a UN forces mission in Mali, at the country's own request, was postponed to later this week due to ongoing talks, diplomatic sources revealed on Tuesday, as per AFP.
Mali's Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop on June 16 asked the UN to withdraw its MINUSMA force immediately.
While the consent of the host state is one of the principles of keeping UN forces in it, diplomatic sources pointed to a resolution drafted by France that proposes providing a period of six months for the withdrawal of the more than 12,000 soldiers and police deployed in the West African nation.
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The withdrawal comes after Mali's Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop urged the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), which was created in 2013, to exit Mali.
Diop told the UN that "MINUSMA seems to have become part of the problem by fuelling community tensions exacerbated by extremely serious allegations which are highly detrimental to peace, reconciliation and national cohesion in Mali."
Moreover, Dio explained that "this situation generates a feeling of distrust among the populations with regard to Minusma."
