Country
Somalia
An electoral crisis that dragged fifteen months past its deadline, and the fifteen-year African Union mission that was reconfigured out of existence the same year it finally ended.
Somalia's Security Council file during Kenya's term ran on two parallel tracks: an electoral crisis that dragged on for more than a year past its own deadline, and the slow reconfiguration of AMISOM, the African Union's mission there since January 2007, into a mission built to hand security back to Somalia itself.
Kenya's statements, delivered nationally and through the A3+1 coalition with Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Tunisia, track both with a shared undertone: frustration that political drift in Mogadishu kept undercutting the security gains AMISOM's own troops, disproportionately African and, as Kenya's February 2021 statement points out, paid at only 70 percent of the rate of UN peacekeepers facing considerably less risk, had paid for.
The electoral crisis began when a September 2020 agreement on the electoral process collapsed, missing its own February 2021 deadline for a new parliament and president. It deepened through 2021, President Farmaajo's own term having already expired, until a December 2021 standoff between Farmaajo and Prime Minister Roble over control of the stalled election nearly became an open institutional rupture, with Roble accusing the president of attempting a coup. Farmaajo ultimately ceded control of the process to Roble, and the election that should have taken place in early 2021 finally concluded in May 2022 with Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's return to the presidency he had first held a decade earlier.
Underneath that political story, Kenya's statements argued consistently, well before it happened, for the AMISOM reconfiguration that the African Union and UN eventually adopted: citing the Secretary-General's own January 2021 Independent Assessment, Kenya's A3+1 statement called for UN assessed-contribution funding and a fairer stipend structure for African troops fighting Al-Shabaab, a position finally realized when AMISOM was reconfigured into the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) in April 2022, tasked with handing full security responsibility to Somali forces by 2024, fifteen years after the mission's own founding.
Independent Sources for This Introduction
Contemporary Reporting
Chronology
| 2007-01-19 | event | AMISOM established The African Union Peace and Security Council creates the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) with an initial six-month mandate, backing the Transitional Federal Government against an Islamist insurgency; the UN Security Council approves the mission's mandate a month later. AMISOM's first troops deploy to Mogadishu in March 2007, the start of what becomes a fifteen-year African-led military presence, later shifting its main adversary to Al-Shabaab. |
| 2021-02-20 | Statement | Somalia: A3+1 Statement A3+1 joint statement (Kenya, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tunisia), delivered by Amb. Martin Kimani, Permanent Representative of Kenya |
| 2021-03-31 | Statement | Talking Notes for Briefing on Somalia Under Any Other Business Kenya's national statement, delivered by Amb. Martin Kimani, Permanent Representative |
| 2021-09-28 | Statement | Situation of Women in Somalia: Statement Kenya's national statement, delivered by Amb. Martin Kimani, Permanent Representative |
| 2021-10-20 | Photograph | Security Council Meeting on Somalia (Council Presidency) |
| 2021-12-27 | event | Farmaajo suspends Prime Minister Roble amid the election standoff President Mohamed Abdullahi 'Farmaajo' Mohamed, whose own term had already expired in February, suspends Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble over a corruption investigation; Roble refuses to step down and accuses Farmaajo of attempting a coup. Farmaajo ultimately hands control of the stalled electoral process to Roble to defuse the standoff, fifteen months after the vote had originally been due. |
| 2022-04-01 | event | AMISOM transitions to ATMIS Following an African Union Peace and Security Council decision that March, AMISOM is reconfigured into the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), tasked with a phased handover of security responsibility to Somali forces by 2024. This is the reconfiguration Kenya's own February 2021 A3+1 statement had argued for more than a year earlier, on the basis of the Secretary-General's own Independent Assessment. |
| 2022-05-15 | event | Hassan Sheikh Mohamud elected president, defeating Farmaajo Somalia's Federal Parliament elects Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to a second, non-consecutive term as president, defeating incumbent Farmaajo. This resolves the electoral crisis Kenya's statements had tracked with mounting concern for over a year. |
| 2022-11-17 | Statement | Somalia Sanctions Renewal: Explanation of Vote, Resolution 2662 (2022) Kenya's national explanation of vote |
| 2022-11-10 | Statement | Counter-Terrorism in Africa: Statement During High-Level Debate Kenya's national statement |