The US has previously opposed UN funding for the G5 Sahel Joint Force designed to counter insurgency in the region.
Five nations waging a battle against militants in Africa’s Sahel region again asked for United Nations funding and other aid to help tackle the cross-border jihadist insurgency which claimed more lives even as officials met.
Leaders of the G5 Sahel – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger – gathered in the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou on Tuesday, Wednesday 5, seeking to beef up the battle against jihadists who have killed hundreds of civilians and security personnel and inflicted crippling economic damage.
In the latest incidents in northern Burkina Faso, five security personnel were killed in what the army called a “terrorist” attack at Oursi add link to other unpublished story on Tuesday, a day after an attack in Yatenta province left left 14 civilians dead.
At the close of a one-day meeting, the five leaders in a statement renewed their “concern” over the situation, and called for “closer cooperation between the G5 Sahel and the United Nations.”
This should include assistance to the G5 Sahel joint military force under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which can authorize measures to help a country “which finds itself confronted with special economic problems” arising from “prevention and enforcement measures” aimed at safeguarding peace, they said.
Chapter 7 empowers the Security Council to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression” and to take military action to “restore international peace and security.”
The president of summit host Burkina Faso, Roch Marc Christian Kabore, also asked for “redoubling efforts to accelerate the strengthening of the joint force.”
Mahamadou Issoufou, president of Niger, told reporters there was a need to find “a permanent mechanism to finance” the Joint Force under the U.N. Charter’s Chapter 7.
The G5, he added, “reaffirmed its determination and its willingness to continue the fight against terrorism with all means necessary: militarily, economically – because poverty is the fertile ground in which terrorism thrives – and also ideologically.”
In their joint statement, the heads of state said a military force can never be the only solution, and urged the international community “to support the G5 Sahel’s efforts” to secure and develop the region.
The five countries are among the world’s poorest. Donors pledged €2.4 billion for around 40 development program for the G5 Sahel Priority Investment Programme for 2019-2021 at a December conference.
