UN Extends Mali Peacekeeping Force Without Cuts

UN Extends Mali Peacekeeping, The United Nations Security Council has unanimously voted to extend the mandate

of its seven-year peacekeeping force in Mali for another 12 months without any cuts in personnel.

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Monday’s renewal of the mission, known as MINUSMA, allows for the number of its members to continue

to comprise up to 13,289 soldiers and 1,920 police officers.

For more than a year, Washington — the largest financial contributor to the UN —

has regularly questioned the mission, which costs $1.2 billion annually, deeming it ill-suited

to the ongoing violence in the West African nation.

The expected move signifies a temporary truce between the United States and France,

both permanent Security Council members and veto-power holders, according to analysts.

Meanwhile, France, which has taken the most active military role of any foreign power in its former colony,

sees MINUSMA as an essential component of a broad coalition of forces currently attempting to root out armed groups.

Mali is struggling to contain a multilayered and complex conflict that erupted in 2012 and which has killed thousands of military and civilian since.

Despite the presence of thousands of French and UN troops, the violence has engulfed the center of the country and spread to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Attacks have grown fivefold between 2016 and 2020, with 4,000 people killed in 2019,

up from about 770 killed in 2016, according to the UN.

the number of people forced to leave their homes due to the rapidly deteriorating security situation in the region has surged from about 600,000 internally displaced people recorded in May 2010 to 1.5 million by April 2020.

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