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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday urged the international community to support the fight against violent extremism led by West Africa, saying that the only region in the world could contain the spread of jihadism.
A raging Islamist insurgency shows no sign of weakening in the Sahel, where armed groups have gained ground and displaced millions of people in much of the region in crisis.
Guterres said the problem was spreading beyond the region and that the G-5 Sahel force – a joint military effort from Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, and Mauritania to fight the jihadists – needed more outside support than what she was getting.
"We are sadly finding that terrorism is progressing," Guterres told reporters at the opening of a two-day conference on the fight against extremism in Africa in the Kenyan capital.
"It started in Mali, then in Burkina Faso, in Niger, and now, when we are talking to the presidents of Ghana, Benin, Togo, and Côte d'Ivoire, they say that terrorism is spreading to their borders. "
The UN chief said it was essential that African forces have "the necessary mandate and funding" to do their job and called for joint efforts to fight extremism in the country. G-5 Sahel.
"I think now that it would be important for us to be open to supporting any African initiative involving all countries in the region, in which the threat is spreading," he said.
The presidents of West Africa "believe that we need a much stronger and more collective response and that the international community must find the mechanisms to support it fully".
G-5 Sahelian leaders have repeatedly called for a mandate under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter – measures that could authorize the use of sanctions or military intervention in situations where peace and security are threatened.
Their request was refused, which Guterres regretted. The agreed funding for the G-5 force in the Sahel has been slow to arrive.
The chairman of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, expressed "his difficulties in understanding the prevarications of the international community" in financing security operations on the continent.
"It's an incomprehensible situation, the phenomenon is deepening," he said.
As in Syria and Iraq "the entire international community must be mobilized to face a phenomenon that has the same characteristics".
The Nairobi meeting is a regional version of the first-ever global conference on terrorism, organized by the United Nations in 2018 in New York.
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