Kenya wants the United Nations to finance and boost counter-terrorism efforts in the region. By funding the AU peacekeeping mission in Somalia, the move will help in defeating Al-Shabaab and subsequently stabilizing Somalia.
According to Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Chief Administrative Secretary Ababu Namwamba, there is need to plug funding gaps and boost counter-terrorism efforts.
He highlighted that the promotion and maintenance of peace and security in the world is the primary mandate of the United Nations.
He noted that, regrettably, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) continues to suffer insufficient and unpredictable funding thus straining the mission’s objective of defeating extremists’ elements in Somalia and the region. The UN funds AMISOM only by recompensing its equipment and other logistical expenditure.
Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Djibouti and Burundi have jointly contributed troops to the 22,000-strong force, initially meant to last only six months in 2007, but which is still engaged in a persistent fight with the terrorist groups in Somalia.
The Kenyan leader made the remarks at a gathering of diplomats from the African Union and the European Union in Brussels, when he represented the country’s Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Monica Juma on Tuesday 22nd January 2019.
