The United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) announced on Monday that it had withdrawn from two sites in the disputed Abyei region between Sudan and South Sudan following a security assessment.
In a statement, the mission said it had “completed the withdrawal of all peacekeepers and national monitors from the team sites in Chuin and Abu Qussa/Wunkur.”
The withdrawal, the mission said, followed an assessment that found the security situation in the two areas to be increasingly volatile and unpredictable, significantly restricting force protection measures and the sustainability of the team sites, while also hampering the safe and effective implementation of the mission’s mandate.
Chuin lies between Heglig and Bentiu and serves as a crossing point between Sudan and South Sudan. Abu Qussa/Wunkur, meanwhile, is a pastoral overlap zone along the border where UNISFA’s Joint Border Verification and Monitoring Mechanism had been using the two sites to monitor the demilitarized area.
The statement noted that the last convoy carrying peacekeepers, national monitors and equipment arrived in Abyei on March 6.
It added that the withdrawal from the Joint Border Verification and Monitoring Mechanism sites comes after the evacuation of the mechanism’s logistical base in Kadugli last year.
The mechanism is responsible for monitoring and verifying the Safe Demilitarized Border Zone, which was established in 2012 after Sudan and South Sudan agreed to create the zone with support from UNISFA.
