Berlin, May 3: The German government said on Wednesday it had decided to end its participation in the UN mission in Mali by next May.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s cabinet said Berlin would pull its 1,110 troops in the UN mission MINUSMA out of the West African country over the next year and pivot towards more humanitarian and development aid for the region.
“Whether we want it to or not, what happens in the Sahel affects us,” Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in a statement.
“We are reorganising our engagement in the region and will let our participation in MINUSMA run out in a structured fashion over the next 12 months.”
The government said it would “at the same time deepen its civil support for the region” and “strengthen the focus of its engagement on security in Niger, Mauritania and the states on the Gulf of Guinea”.
Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said the recent fighting in Sudan had underlined “how quickly a country’s instability can lead to an existential threat for the lives of our citizens”.
He said Berlin’s goal was to “foster the growing responsibility of Africans for security and stability on their own continent”.
