Envoys from countries that contribute troops to Somalia have been accumulating air miles in recent months, travelling between Addis Ababa, Brussels and New York, seeking an agreeable funding arrangement with the European Union and the United Nations Security Council, for the new African Union (AU)-led mission to Somalia.
But a deal remains elusive, as international partners have not agreed on how to fund the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (Aussom), without risking the pitfalls of previous missions that have faced funding shortfalls.
The five troop-contributing countries (TCCs) protested the UN Security Council’s proposal to cover up to 75 percent of the mission’s budget using the United Nations assessed contributions, leaving the AU to figure out how to meet the 25 percent funding gap – details of which remain vague.
“In all meetings, we have made it clear, that funding Aussom is a UN Security Council issue. So, they must be able to fund it,” said Rebecca Otengo, Uganda’s Permanent Representative to AU.
Envoys from Uganda, Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Burundi first flew to New York in September last year, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly and returned to the UN headquarters two weeks later to address the funding issue.
“We asked them, why cap funding at 75 percent when this mission is yours,” Amb Otengo said, referring to the proposed funding cap as per UNSC Resolution 2719 of 2023, which she said does not define what is meant to be covered under the 25 percent for which the funding source is not yet provided.
Another meeting took place in Brussels in December 2024, but failed to resolve the impasse as the AU and TCCs sought to cover the funding gap with the mission’s international partners.
“I told the donors in Brussels that they should stop looking at the mission in terms of financial resources. People have made sacrifices and paid the ultimate price. The sacrifices and blood of AU troops on the ground matter,” Amb Otengo said.
The EastAfrican has learnt that during the January 1 – June 30, 2025 transition phase, Aussom is scraping by on funds from the AU Peace Fund, which is enough to support the mission for the next four months only.
Meanwhile, its predecessor, the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (Atmis), closed operations last month with a $120 million deficit.
Sources say that even as the first phase of Aussom is already on the ground, many details about the force are still being worked on, which is why the demand by the TCCs for clarity on what is covered under the 25 percent funding gap can’t be provided at this point.
James Kariuki, UK’s Permanent Representative to the UN, admitted during a UN Security Council session that authorised Aussom on December 27, 2024 that the mission was “the culmination of a complex negotiation” between different parties. The UK is the penholder on Somalia and convened the session.
Ambassador Kariuki said the Security Council will in May this year approve a transformative change to the mission’s funding – the first time the framework established by the UN Security Council Resolution will be applied, for the UN to meet 75 percent of Aussom’s budget, and raise 25 percent from donors.
But analysts interpret this as an admission that despite the public show of agreement, the donors are at odds over Somalia’s latest peacekeeping mission, with the UK – the penholder on Somalia – seeking cohesion among partners for the success of Aussom.
It is understood that the US has abstained from the discussions as a result of a transition in Washington DC from the Biden administration to the Trump presidency, and there are indications that the previous administration did not want to commit its successor to foreign missions that may not be Trump’s priority.
As such, the US position on the AU mission in Somalia remains unclear under Trump’s America First policy, while the EU has insisted that it will only commit resources to Aussom once other major powers have agreed to share the financial burden of the mission.
“We stand ready to consider providing support to Aussom based on fairer burden-sharing between international partners,” a spokesperson for the EU told The EastAfrican.
Brussels’ reasoning is based on the bloc having met the lion’s share of the budget for peacekeeping missions to Somalia since 2007.
The EU has been the main financial contributor to Amisom and Atmis since their creation, covering troops' salaries for which it provided nearly €2.7 billion over the last 15 years of the AU-led peacekeeping forces deployment in Somalia.
Last month, Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Minister General Jeje Odongo told a virtual ministerial meeting of the AU Peace and Security Council that the African Union Commission and the UN should create an urgent roadmap for resource mobilisation to address the funding gap.
Gen Odongo warned that the funding gap risks taking the new peacekeeping force down the same road as Aussom’s predecessor missions Amisom and Atmis which suffered due to an unclear and unpredictable funding model, with donors imposing arbitrary budget cuts.
For instance, in 2016, the EU slashed Amisom funding by 20 percent, and in the subsequent years before the UN Security Council authorised Atmis, Brussels cut support to the mission by 10 percent every year.
“As we have observed before, the current funding model does not work due to its unpredictable and inadequate nature. At the moment, Atmis has a funding deficit of about $120 million. It therefore means that come January, 1 2025, if we continue with Somalia and post-Atmis the status quo, it will not help the new mission,” said Gen Odongo.
“In our view, it will be setting it up to fail. We would not have helped Somalia, neither would we have honoured those many men and women who have paid the ultimate price in the line of duty.”
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