Independent Online News
The UN is providing “multifaceted support” to Mali ahead of this weekend’s constitutional referendum, the head of its peacekeeping mission in the country, MINUSMA, said in a briefing to the Security Council on Friday.
“This is obviously an important time for the mission, coinciding with discussions on the renewal of its mandate, and also for Mali, which continues to face complex security and other forms of challenges,” Special Representative El-Ghassim Wane told ambassadors.… Read the rest
The ongoing conflict in Sudan has raised the spectre of ethnic violence and crimes against humanity, senior UN officials warned on Tuesday. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was deeply concerned about the increasing ethnic dimension, and appalled at reports of large scale violence in Darfur.
Shoppers in Mali’s Gao, Timbuktu, and Ménaka regions can snap up AK-pattern assault rifles for $750 and cartridges for 70 cents apiece, from locally handcrafted pistols to smuggled French and Turkish machine guns, as a dizzying array of illegal weaponry dots market stalls across the Sahel, a 6,000-kilometre-wide belt in the middle of Africa.… Read the rest
The “lack of unity and action” in the Security Council “does little to slow the negative trajectory on the Korean Peninsula”, Rosemary DiCarlo, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, said on Friday, following Pyongyang’s failed military satellite launch earlier this week.… Read the rest