Mali Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop last month called for the UN Security Council to withdraw peacekeepers from his country “without delay”, denouncing their “failure” to meet security challenges. The UN Security Council, which was due to vote on the renewal of the mission’s mandate on June 29, is likely to agree to Mali’s request, according to diplomatic sources. The landlocked Sahel state has been battling a security crisis since jihadist and separatist insurgencies broke out in 2012. “There is a ‘consent crisis’ in several African countries,” Patryk Labuda of the University of Zurich told AFP. And host states are unfortunately using this as leverage,” Julie Gregory, of the Stimson Center think tank, told AFP.

Source: The North Africa Journal June 26, 2023 15:35 UTC