TUNIS, Tunisia
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed Parfait Onanga-Anyanga as the new head of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA).
Former MINUSCA chief Babacar Gaye had resigned on Wednesday following a series of sexual abuse allegations involving peacekeepers in the country.
A diplomatic source in Bangui told Anadolu Agency that Anyanga was appointed on Thursday evening after a closed-door meeting with members of the UN Security Council in New York.
Anyanga, 55, is from Gabon and has extensive experience with the United Nations in the political, diplomatic, development and management domain.
Between 2012 and January 2015, he was special representative of the secretary-general and head of the United Nations office in Burundi, where his record was judged as “satisfactory” by many observers.
On Tuesday, Amnesty International had released a report accusing UN peacekeeping forces in CAR of raping a 12-year-old girl and killing a 16-year-old boy and his father during a security operation in the country’s capital Bangui in early August.
After announcing Gaye’s resignation on Wednesday, Ban Ki-moon told reporters at the UN’s New York headquarters that the UN has launched an investigation into the case.
MINUSCA was established in 2014 by a UN Security Council resolution and has over 12,870 uniformed personnel.
