Ivory Coast wants UN drone border surveillance

UN: Ivory Coast asked the United Nations Tuesday to monitor its border with Liberia with drones to make up for the expected decline in the global body's presence in the African country. Should a planned withdrawal of UN peacekeepers go into effect, Ivory Coast is seeking “the deployment of qualitative resources such as surveillance drones in the border area,” said the country's UN envoy, Youssoufou Bamba.

At the end of March, the UN Security Council had authorized the use of drones in the Democratic Republic of Congo to monitor that country's borders with Rwanda and Uganda -- a first for a peacekeeping mission.

Several Council members had at the time insisted that the move did not set a precedent. The United Nations foresees reducing its roughly 9,000-strong operation in Ivory Coast, known as UNOCI. Discussions with the Ivory Coast government are ongoing.

“I would like to indicate that the Ivory Coast government believes that the current level is good,” Bamba said during a Security Council debate on the situation. Several Liberian army units were deployed to border posts between the two countries last year to counter armed gangs raiding the Ivorian side from Liberia. The groups have targeted western Ivory Coast since the end of the country's 2010-2011 crisis, which left 3,000 dead in the wake of a disputed presidential election. In one attack in June 2012, seven UN peacekeepers lost their lives.

AFP