UNITED NATIONS – The UN Security Council Friday unanimously adopted a resolution urging the African regional groups and the UN to present within 45 days a plan for military intervention in Mali to help the transitional government troops retake control of the north from militants.
The UN has been refusing to endorse requests for military intervention without the details of a plan.
In the resolution, the 15-member Council called on Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to provide military and security planners to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the African Union (AU) and other partners to respond to the request from Mali’s transitional authorities for military help to overthrow the Islamists.
Chapter VII of the UN Charter allows the UNSC to use force in the face of a threat to peace or aggression, taking “such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security,” including blockades and other operations by the forces of the member states.
Fighting between the Malian government forces and the Tuareg rebels broke out in the country’s north in January, and the country descended into chaos in March when soldiers toppled the president in a coup d’etat. The security vacuum that followed led to the rebels seizing control of two-thirds of the country. The political instability and fighting have driven 500,000 Malians from their homes, 270,000 of them to neighbouring countries.
The Islamists have imposed strict Sharia law, including amputation of limps as punishment.
In August, the Council urged ECOWAS, in cooperation with the transitional authorities, the AU Commission and regional countries, to prepare detailed proposals for a stabilisation force to restore the territorial integrity of the country.
The Council called on Malian rebel groups to cut off all ties to terrorist organisations, notably Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and affiliated groups, and expressed its readiness to adopt targeted sanctions against those groups which do not do so.
It also urged the transitional authorities, rebels and other legitimate representatives of the local population in the northern Mali to engage, as soon as possible, in credible negotiations to seek a sustainable political solution in conformity with the country’s unity, and demanded that all groups in the north cease all human rights violations such as attacks against civilians, sexual violence, recruitments of child soldiers and forced displacements.
Today’s Council resolution reiterated ‘grave concern’ at the continuing deterioration of the security and humanitarian situation in the north of Mali, the increasing entrenchment of terrorist elements including AQIM, affiliated groups and other extremist groups, and its consequences for the countries of the Sahel and beyond.
In addition, it strongly condemned the abuses of human rights committed “by armed rebels, terrorist and other extremist groups, including violence against its civilians, notably women and children, killings, hostage-taking, pillaging, theft, destruction of cultural and religious sites and recruitment of child soldiers,” and stressed that some of these acts might amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.