{"id":5075,"date":"2023-11-21T18:18:22","date_gmt":"2023-11-21T18:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=5075"},"modified":"2023-11-21T18:18:22","modified_gmt":"2023-11-21T18:18:22","slug":"un-missions-expelled-from-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/21\/un-missions-expelled-from-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"UN Missions Expelled from Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Report: Talal Muddathir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Prelude <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt failed in its work and duties stipulated in the mandate.\u201d \u201cIt ignored the observation expressed by the official regarding the negative performance that characterized the mission\u2019s activity from the beginning.\u201d \u201cIts performance was disappointing.\u201d Based on these three phrases, Sudan last Thursday ended the work of the United Nations Mission to Support the Transition in Sudan – UNITAMS – in a gesture that brought to mind two African decisions similar to the same Sudanese position taken towards the mission by Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.<\/p>\n

Mali.. <\/strong>evident bias leads to expulsion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last January, at the UN Security Council session, Guillaume Njifa Atundoko, head of the Human Rights Department at the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), presented a group of civilian witnesses against Mali. Such position did not satisfy the Malian government, which accused him of what it described as \u201cbiased selection\u201d of civil society witnesses in the UN Security Council sessions on it. Because of this bias, the interim government in Mali gave the head of the mission’s human rights department “48” hours to leave the country. Even the denunciations of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, did not succeed in dissuading “Bamako” from its decision against Guillaume Njifa Atundoko, who is originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to leave, complied with the decision of the Mali authorities.
\nDoes it stop here? No, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) soon aroused the anger of the Malian government again, so that Mali demanding last June, through its Foreign Minister Abdullah Diop, \u201cto formally withdraw without delay\u201d as it has become part of the problem by fueling sectarian tensions which arose due to very serious allegations that cause serious harm to peace, reconciliation and national cohesion there.
\nThe Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mali at the time rejected all choices for amending the mandate of the United Nations mission proposed by the Secretary-General of the international organization, and insisted before the UN Security Council on the \u201cwithdrawal of MINUSMA without delay,\u201d while the head of the UN mission, Al-Qassim Wine, considered this decision to be a decision that must be taken by the Security Council. He then recalled, saying \u201cBut the point I would like to make clear, and which I think everyone agrees on, is that peacekeeping depends on the principle of the host country\u2019s approval, and in the absence of this approval, working without the government\u2019s approval becomes \u201calmost impossible.\u201d
\nThe United Nations Stabilization Mission in Mali, which is estimated to number about 15,000 troops and police, is scheduled to withdraw by December 31 in compliance with the Bamako decision.<\/p>\n

Congo.. the blue caps are undesirable<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the same way as what happened in Mali, the scenario was repeated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which began expelling UN officials early in 2014, when it became fed up with the actions of the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Scott Campbell, so it expelled him in turn and gave him 48 hours to leave the country.
\nIn 2022, the Congo decided to expel the spokesman for the United Nations Mission for Stabilization in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) from its territory.
\nFor the same reasons mentioned by Mali, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, announced last August that the work of his mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had entered its \u201cfinal phase\u201d after a mission that lasted nearly 25 years with a mission that included more than 14,000 peacekeepers.<\/p>\n

Sudan follows in the footsteps of Mali and Congo<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Sudan, things began to take a different turn, as the head of the UNTAMS mission, Volker perthes, submitted his resignation from the post last September, four months after General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan requested the United Nations to replace him with another representative as the Sudan has leveled accusations against not being impartial and of devoting himself to political issues far from the mandate of the mission
\nIn his letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Al-Burhan went even further by indicating that the leader of the Rapid Support militia would not have rebelled if he had not received signals of assurance and encouragement from a number of parties, including Volker Perthes himself.
\nOn November 16, Sudan returned to officially inform the Security Council of the termination of the mandate of the United Nations Mission to Support the Transition in Sudan (UNITAMIS) because it had failed in its work and duties stipulated in the mandate and \u201cignored the observations of officials regarding the negative performance that characterized the mission\u2019s activity from the beginning.\u201d Its \u201cperformance was disappointing,\u201d ending the request for an era of a 400-person mission that was brought to Sudan in the year 2021 at the request of then Prime Minister Hamdouk for the purpose of being a \u201cspecial political mission that comprises a strong peace building component for a period of 12 months as an initial phase, and the Security Council recently extended its mandate until the third of next December.<\/p>\n

Guterres’s options for dealing with Sudan’s request<\/strong><\/p>\n

To deal with the crisis of ending the work of the United Nations Mission to Support the Transition in Sudan (UNITAMS), many observers expect that the options of the Secretary-General of the United Nations to resolve the crisis will be limited to submitting a recommendation to the Security Council for a compromise solution that requires \u201crestructuring\u201d the mission so that its mission is limited and restricted to number of priorities.
\nThis seems to be the most likely scenario, and the United Nations paved the way for it with the Secretary-General\u2019s announcement of the appointment of the English expert \u201cIan Martin\u201d to lead the strategic review process of the UNITAMS mission, with the aim of providing the Security Council with options on how to adapt the mission\u2019s mandate to better suit the current context.
\nIan Martin, an English human rights consultant, previously headed the United Nations mission in Libya from 2015 to 2018.
\nThis step corresponds to Sudan\u2019s step before submitting its request to terminate the mission\u2019s work, as it formed a committee to deal with the United Nations mission, headed by a member of the Sudanese Sovereign Council, Lieutenant General Ibrahim Jabir, which concluded that the mission\u2019s tasks would be different from the way it recently turned to and that it would contribute effectively to establishing the foundations of peace and working to achieve peace, reconstruction and preparing the ground for elections
\nThis is a position that the Sudanese government\u2019s statement before the Security Council last week confirmed its commitment to dealing constructively with the Security Council and the United Nations Secretariat.
\nIf this consensual formula is adhered to, a new role will await the new UN Envoy to Sudan from Algeria, Ramtan Lamouamra, who was appointed by Guterres last Friday to succeed the expelled Volker Perthes.
\nUNTAMS is at stake
\nThere have been many failures witnessed by the United Nations missions sent to African countries, as six peacekeeping missions out of the 12 current UN missions in the world are in Africa, facing numerous accusations such as interference in the internal affairs of African countries and the \u201cpoliticization\u201d that faces their performance, along with the failure to contain African conflicts, and even inflaming some of them. Will the United Nations Mission to Support the Transition (UNITAMIS) continue its work in Sudan according to a new description and a different mandate from the previous one, or will its fate be the fate of the deported missions of Congo and Mali, the \u201cMONUSCO\u201d and \u201cMINUSMA\u201d? Let us wait for next December 3rd, the expiry date of the extension.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Report: Talal Muddathir Prelude \u201cIt failed in its work and duties stipulated in the mandate.\u201d \u201cIt ignored the observation expressed by the official regarding the negative performance that characterized the mission\u2019s activity from the beginning.\u201d \u201cIts performance was disappointing.\u201d Based on these three phrases, Sudan last Thursday ended the work of the United Nations Mission …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5077,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5075\/revisions\/5077"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}