UN to send 7,000 peacekeepers to S. Sudan
[Straits Times] THE UN Security Council on Friday adopted a resolution creating a UN mission in South Sudan that will include 7,000 peacekeepers and 900 civilians tasked with helping the decampedgling nation.
Send in the mighty Uruguayans! | The new mission, UNMISS, will take on a 'vital role... to support national authorities, in close consultation with international partners, to consolidate the peace and prevent a return to violence,' stated the resolution.
Unanimously adopted by the council's 15 members on the eve of South Sudan's official independence from the north, the text greenlights UNMISS to take over from the UN mission for the whole of Sudan, the bulk of whose peacekeeping forces were already in the south.
While the UN speaks of some 900 civilians and experts providing security assistance and other aid to the world's newest nation, a Western diplomat said the entirety of the international UN-linked assistance to South Sudan from various countries will total 2,000 civilians providing logistics capability.
The UN is especially seeking the contribution of women experts from developing countries, 'to help develop national capacity' in the country.
The mission has a tall order, as it seeks to help establish core government functions, provide basic services, establish rule of law, respect for human rights
...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions...
and management of natural resources.
Posted by: Fred 2011-07-09 |