Search
  1. Home
  2. West Africa
  3. Sierra Leone

Security Council welcomes ceasefire agreement

    NAIROBI

    The UN Security Council has welcomed the ceasefire agreement signed on Friday between Sierra Leone’s government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) with guarded optimism, saying it was a “first step” towards resuming the country’s peace process.

    “The Security Council will continue to do what it can to help achieve this goal,” Dutch Ambassador Peter van Walsum, council president, said on Tuesday.

    Mistrust of the RUF, which took UN peacekeepers hostage last May, lingers.

    “I believe I can safely say that given the history of Sierra Leone, there was guarded optimism” about the agreement, Van Walsum said. He said council members had called on the RUF to honour the commitments made on Friday, so that Sierra Leone “will get a real chance to find a lasting and durable solution” to the nearly decade-long conflict.

    The UN and Economic Community of West African States helped broker the ceasefire agreement, which is to be reviewed in 30 days.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

    Share this article

    Our ability to deliver compelling, field-based reporting on humanitarian crises rests on a few key principles: deep expertise, an unwavering commitment to amplifying affected voices, and a belief in the power of independent journalism to drive real change.

    We need your help to sustain and expand our work. Your donation will support our unique approach to journalism, helping fund everything from field-based investigations to the innovative storytelling that ensures marginalised voices are heard.

    Please consider joining our membership programme. Together, we can continue to make a meaningful impact on how the world responds to crises.

    Become a member of The New Humanitarian

    Support our journalism and become more involved in our community. Help us deliver informative, accessible, independent journalism that you can trust and provides accountability to the millions of people affected by crises worldwide.

    Join