UN Security Council vote to decide whether peacekeeping mission in Mali will continue

By Fatma Esma Arslan

DAKAR, Senegal (AA) - The UN Security Council will vote next week on whether the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali will continue.

The vote will take place on June 30 as Mali's Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop called for the immediate termination of MINUSMA at the UN Security Council session on June 16.

Diop explained the reason for the withdrawal request as a "crisis of confidence” with MINUSMA.

Relations between MINUSMA and the Mali administration began to deteriorate after the country’s military leader Col. Assimi Goita staged a coup again in 2021 due to disagreements with the actors of the civil transitional government, which was formed after he overthrew President Ibrahim Babacar Keita in 2020.

MINUSMA's investigation requests regarding the allegations that the Malian army "committed the massacre of civilians" were blocked by the Bamako administration.

In the last three months alone, Mali denied 175 flight permits requested by MINUSMA.

- MINUSMA soldiers detained for 7 months

The biggest crisis between Bamako and the UN erupted on July 10, 2022, when Malian authorities accused 49 Ivory Coast soldiers stationed at MINUSMA of being mercenaries and arrested them at Bamako airport.

After MINUSMA spokesman Olivier Salgado reacted to the incident, he was deported. The soldiers, after seven months of detention, were released as a result of various diplomatic efforts.

In February 2023, Guillaume Ngefa Atondoko Andali, director of MINUSMA's Human Rights Division, was declared “persona non grata.”

Tensions increased when MINUSMA accused the Malian army of killing at least 500 civilians in an operation in the Moura region in March 2022. The UN mission published a report in this regard in May.

Stating that MINUSMA's report on the Moura attack was "fictitious" and "biased", the Malian authorities launched an investigation into the peace mission on charges of "endangering the security of the state" and "military conspiracy."

- World's most dangerous peace mission

MINUSMA was established on April 25, 2013, by the UN Security Council decision after the security crisis erupted in Mali.

More than 15,000 soldiers and police from 61 countries from Armenia to Zambia are on duty in MINUSMA, which is located in 12 regions in the north, east, west and interior of the country.

According to data updated by the UN on May 31, MINUSMA has lost 306 personnel in the last 10 years, 192 of them in terrorist attacks.

Due to the number of casualties in terrorist attacks, MINUSMA is considered "the world's most dangerous peacekeeping mission."

After the Mali government reached an agreement with Russia’s private military company Wagner Group, countries such as the UK, Ivory Coast, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Benin, and Egypt decided to withdraw their soldiers from the mission.