Agence France-Presse :
The United Nations announced Wednesday that it intends to withdraw its blue hats from the Democratic Republic of the Congo “as soon as possible” but in a “gradual and responsible” manner, in a move that will end more than 20 years of the peacekeeping mission’s work.
The United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Monusco), which has been operating in this country since 1999, is one of the largest and most costly UN missions in the world, and currently has 16,000 personnel.
Last year, dozens of people were killed in demonstrations against this mission, which is accused of not protecting the population from armed groups deployed in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
During a visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, acknowledged that there is “the frustration of the population (…), because the security situation remains worrying.”
“But there are also fabrications of ‘false news’ (…), because not everyone has an interest in the return of peace,” he added, in a statement to reporters.
The UN official stressed that in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo there are hundreds of thousands of displaced persons who are “protected almost exclusively” by the blue berets, and therefore the withdrawal of Monusco will create a “security vacuum” whose consequences will be “fatal” for those displaced.
Lacroix stressed that Kinshasa must strengthen its forces in order to be able to “take over the tasks that MONUSCO performs” today.