Amid a U.S. push to cut United Nations peacekeeping costs, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday he hoped the U.N. Security Council would agree to send an extra 900 troops to protect civilians in Central African Republic, Reuters reports.
Guterres is scheduled to visit the country next week.
Guterres said that the country’s humanitarian situation is deteriorating and violence is spreading with communal tensions on the rise.
“There is a need to increase the capacity of our troops in Central African Republic to protect civilians.” He said.
He further reiterated that there will be a positive understanding of all the members of the Security Council, including the U.S., the report said.
President Donald Trump wants to cap the U.S. share of the peacekeeping bill at 25 percent, down from 28.5 percent, a level he says is “unfair.”
The United States is a veto-wielding member of the council, along with Britain, France, Russia and China. There are currently more than a dozen peacekeeping missions with a total annual budget of more than $7.3 billion.
U.N. peacekeepers were deployed in 2014 and the Security Council is due to renew the mandate for the mission of more than 12,000 troops and police by mid-November. In a report to the council on Tuesday, Guterres recommended an extra 900 troops.
Guterres has pledged to make U.N. peacekeeping more efficient but has noted that the current budget to fund it is less than one half of 1 percent of global military spending.
U.N. peacekeepers in Central African Republic have also been dogged by allegations of sexual abuse that the world body has been working to address.
“I am pained that some peacekeepers are alleged to have committed egregious acts of sexual exploitation and abuse against the people of the Central African Republic,” Guterres said.
Thousands of people have lost their lives and a fifth of Central Africans have fled a conflict that broke out after mainly Muslim Seleka rebels ousted President Francois Bozize in 2013, provoking a backlash from Christian anti-balaka militias, the report said.
