The UN Security Council voted on Wednesday to end its eight-year-long peacekeeping mission between Eritrea and Ethiopia, a failure the UN chief has warned could lead to a new war between the Horn of Africa neighbors.
Council members voted unanimously to withdraw the remaining peacekeepers from what was once a 1,700-strong force monitoring a 1,000km long buffer zone between the two countries.
Belgian ambassador Jan Grauls told the council that the mission, known as UNMEE, “had become impossible to implement” because Eritreans progressively limited peacekeepers’ movements — including restricting night patrols, supply routes and diesel fuel. The mission was also undermined by Ethiopia’s refusal to accept an independent boundary commission’s ruling in 2002 to award the key town of Badme to Eritrea, he said.
“The border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea remains total, and the United Nations is withdrawing without having been able to assist the two countries in finding a common ground, in spite of having tried all to achieve it,” Grauls said.
Other peacekeeping missions that were unable to fulfill their mandates for political reasons, though they succeeded in protecting some civilian lives, were ones to Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Angola, all of them in the 1990s.
Azouz Ennifar, a Tunisian diplomat speaking for the UN mission from Addis Ababa called it “a difficult mission in geographically harsh locations” that tried its best.
Mission officials said about 320 military personnel remain on the Ethiopian side but most of their peacekeeping personnel have already left the Eritrean side. They said the “formal liquidation” of the headquarters in Addis Ababa and Asmara, Eritrea would begin today.
Among both nations the mission has fewer than 400 civilian staff still in place.
Fewer than 200 UN staff remain in Eritrea, most of them Eritreans tasked with guarding UN equipment until it could be evacuated.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned in April that a new war could break out if peacekeepers were to withdraw entirely from along the disputed border, and urged Eritrea to restore the UN’s ability to patrol its side of the border.
Ban wrote on Monday cautioning the council that “the risk of escalation of tension in the border area and a resumption of hostilities, by accident or design, following the withdrawal of UNMEE remains a reality.”
He included letters from Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin saying the Security Council could have done more to protect the mission and Eritrean ambassador Araya Desta saying the council should have thrown its weight behind the boundary commission’s ruling.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
A documentary whose main subject, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza weeks before it premiered at Cannes stunned viewers into silence at the festival on Thursday. As the cinema lights came back on, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi held up an image of the young Palestinian woman killed with younger siblings on April 16, and encouraged the audience to stand up and clap to pay tribute. “To kill a child, to kill a photographer is unacceptable,” Farsi said. “There are still children to save. It must be done fast,” the exiled Iranian filmmaker added. With Israel
RSS