The financing hole facing AUSSOM

The estimated budget for AUSSOM from July 2025 to June 2026 stands at $166.5 million, based on the troop reimbursement rate of $828, according to the UN Secretary-General’s report to the Security Council dated 7 May 2025. However, the funding challenge extends beyond this figure—it includes the substantial debt inherited from its predecessor, ATMIS. The total urgent cash requirement to settle ATMIS liabilities for the period January to June 2025 is reported at $92 million. In addition, outstanding arrears owed to TCCs from 2022 to 2024 amount to $93.9 million, including Uganda ($34.5 million), Kenya ($15.7 million), Ethiopia ($17.2 million), Djibouti ($8.3 million), and Burundi ($18.1 million).

So far, committed funding amounts to only $16.7 million, comprising contributions from China ($1 million), Japan ($3 million), the Republic of Korea ($1.6 million), and the AU Peace Fund’s Crisis Reserve Facility ($10 million). With Resolution 2719 now off the table as a viable funding option, the AU faces the daunting task of mobilising the needed funds from alternative sources. The European Union (EU), which has been the single largest direct contributor to AU mission in Somalia, providing nearly €2.7 billion since 2007, shows little appetite to sustain its past commitments, given shifting geopolitical priorities. While the EU may still commit some funds, it is unlikely to fill the gap. Contributions from non-traditional donors also appear limited, as seen from the modest pledges by China, Japan, and South Korea. (For further analysis of AUSSOM’s funding challenges and related discussions, see Amani Africa’s ‘Insights on the PSC’ here and here.)

The promise that failed to materialise 

Despite the decision of the UN Security Council (UNSC) in its Resolution 2767 that Resolution 2719 could be used as the main source of predictable financing of AUSSOM upon UNSC authorisation on 15 May 2025, the UNSC meeting held on 12 May was unable to adopt the resolution authorising the use of Resolution 2719. This has shattered AU’s preferred funding model as the only viable path for sustaining AUSSOM, putting the very continuity of the mission in its current form in serious question.

Since the adoption of Resolution 2719, the AU has consistently advocated for the resolution’s first activation in support of the post-ATMIS security arrangements, which eventually took shape as AUSSOM. Indeed, the AU-UN joint report submitted to the UNSC on 26 November 2024 proposed the hybrid implementation of resolution 2719 as the only solution for AUSSOM. However, this effort faced opposition from the United States from the outset, with Washington arguing that Somalia was not a suitable test case for the application of the resolution. It was in this context that the Security Council held closed consultations on 12 May 2025. With the U.S. maintaining its position that Somalia is not the best place to trigger resolution 2719, the Council was unable to confirm the Secretary-General’s request as envisaged under paragraph 39 of UNSC Resolution 2767.

A search for alternative funding?

No doubt, much of the attention would now shift to finding alternative sources of funding. Indeed, efforts are underway to convene an international donor pledging conference in Doha, Qatar, by the end of this month to rally support for AUSSOM and Somalia. The conference, initially planned for late April, has already been postponed to the end of May. With no confirmed date, it remains uncertain whether there is genuine interest in convening the event, and even if it does happen, whether it will yield the kind of sustainable funding the mission desperately needs.

Though it may be possible to cobble together enough funding to keep AUSSOM running for a few more months, doing so in dribs and drabs is not sustainable. This approach has already plunged the AU into a perpetual financial crisis with serious implications for the mission’s effectiveness and credibility. Indeed, it is not clear if a success in finding such alternative sources can do more than postpone the inevitable for a few months. After more than 18 years of deploying its longest, most expensive, and deadliest mission in Somalia, the time may have come to consider an exit. This apparent inevitability presents a much-needed opportunity for thinking about other options than an AUSSOM model of pursuing peace in Somalia, with Somalia’s political and social actors forced to take their acts together for mobilising the requisite level of collective leadership and responsibility for tackling the security challenge facing Somalia.

Also, a search for a different approach to peace in Somalia?

While ending AUSSOM is not risk free, it is not totally bad either. It could open the door to two possible security arrangements: bilateral security partnerships or an ad hoc regional military alliance to counter Al-Shabaab—something akin to the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) in the Lake Chad Basin.

Whatever shape post-AUSSOM security takes in Somalia, ending the mission can also have an upside in terms of ensuring the primacy of political and diplomatic strategy. Two aspects in particular deserve attention.

First, in the military and political dimensions of the equation for finding a lasting solution to the security crisis facing Somalia, the weakest link remains to be the political dimension of the equation. Rather than enabling Somalia’s political and social forces to assume greater agency and responsibility in adopting a political roadmap backed by all sectors of society for resolving the conflict, the perpetual presence of AU missions created dependency and externalisation of this responsibility. Despite some progress registered over the years in this respect, Somali political actors remain locked in protracted infighting both at the Federal level and between the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) and the Federal Member States (FMS). The fracturing of the political landscape continues to deepen, with the National Consultative Council members turned into members of a new political party of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Ending the mission could inject much-needed pressure on Somali political leaders to end their complacency and focus their attention to working collectively and achieve political cohesion.

Second, it may pave the way to imagine the resolution of Al-Shabaab’s insurgency beyond and above military solutions underwritten by AU peace support operations. The ultimate objective of any peace operation is to create the space for a political solution. Over the last 18 years since the first deployment of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) in March 2007, the AU’s military engagement in the country has made significant security gains over Al-Shabaab, but these gains cannot be sustained with indefinite peace operations. As argued by the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, ‘…whatever form a peace operation takes, to be effective in the long run it must be anchored in and contribute to an overarching political solution.’ Such a political solution continues to delude Somalia. Eighteen years of AU mission in Somalia played critical role in liberating territories under Al Shabbab control and in expanding the space for the operation of Somalia’s fledgling institutions. It was pointed out in 2010 that rather than being an instrument for advancing the implementation of a political process, the AU mission became ‘the primary means of international engagement in Somalia, taking the place of an absent political process.’ Whatever progress that has been made in the political front remains inadequate and AU’s mission continues to be used as the primary instrument in the quest for peace. The result is that the military approach has come to take primacy and the prolonged presence of AU missions being used to perpetually short change the investment in a political strategy.

The end of ASUSSOM could force a much-needed rethinking for shifting the focus towards ensuring the primacy of politics in the search for resolving the crisis in Somalia. It could force Somalia’s political and social forces to take far greater interest in and invest more resolutely in prioritizing national reconciliation and inclusive political settlement, thereby shifting away from the protracted infighting that characterizes the Somalia political landscape. Similarly, it could give the international community the opportunity to play a more supportive role by seizing the space AUSSOM’s exit creates for prioritizing its investment in such a political process.

While the risk associated with AUSSOM’s end should be managed carefully, this also seems to be an opportune moment to change course and try new approaches rather than clinging to a model whose role is for managing rather than resolving the crisis facing Somalia.