The UN Security Council on Tuesday renewed the mandate of the nearly 9,000-strong peacekeeping force in Côte d'Ivoire for another six months, rejecting President Laurent Gbagbo’s order for them to leave the troubled country.
The UN Mission in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) accused Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to step down despite international recognition of opposition leader Alassane Ouattara as the clear victor in November’s run-off poll, of launching a new wave of harassment against its staff, including night-time knocks on the door by armed men, after the earlier shooting at a UN convoy.
“However, all these acts will not deter UNOCI from doing its job as we remember one of Winston Churchill’s maxims: ‘If you are going through hell, just keep going,’” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative Y. J. Choi told a news conference in Abidjan, commercial capital of the world’s largest cocoa exporter.
“UNOCI shall keep going, doing its job,” he said, according to a statement released by the UN Information Office in Accra.
The statement quoted a unanimous resolution as saying the Council condemned “in the strongest possible terms the attempts to usurp the will of the people and undermine the integrity of the electoral process and any progress in the peace process in Côte d'Ivoire.”
UNOCI has been supporting efforts over the past seven years to reunify the West African country, which was split by civil war in 2002 into a government-controlled south and a rebel-held north.
Adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter that allows for the use of force, the resolution denounced post-electoral violence that has claimed at least 50 lives.
It asked Mr Ban to facilitate dialogue between all sides, urging them to respect Mr Ouattara’s victory as endorsed by the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in a poll that was meant to be a culminating step in the peace process.
The Council affirmed its readiness to impose sanctions – which can include asset freezes and travel bans.
These would be against those threatening the peace process, undermining the outcome of the elections, obstructing UNOCI, or committing human rights violations.
The resolution recalled UNOCI’s authorization “to use all necessary means to carry out its mandate” – which includes helping the government in conjunction with the AU and ECOWAS to re-establish the rule of law.
Renewing the mission’s mandate until 30 June 2011, it authorized a three-month extension of the deployment of 500 additional personnel beyond UNOCI’s maximum strength of 8,650 and a four-week extension of the deployment of three infantry companies and one helicopter unit from the UN mission in neighbouring Liberia.
It affirmed “its intention to consider” further temporary UNMIL redeployments as may be needed.