FACTBOX: Peacekeeping in Africa

(Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council is set to renew a mandate for peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region on Thursday. Here are some details on international peacekeeping in Africa.

* SUDAN, DARFUR: (UNAMID) (From 2007)

-- In 2007 the U.N. Security Council finally authorized 26,000 troops and police for the operation known as UNAMID.

-- The force has been struggling to stabilize the situation. Only some 9,500 troops and police have been deployed out of a planned force of 26,000, partly due to Khartoum's insistence that most peacekeepers be Africans.

-- Adding to UNAMID's difficulties, troop contributing countries have failed to provide badly-needed helicopters and other equipment for the mission.

* SUDAN, SOUTH: (UNIMIS) (From 2005)

-- The Security Council authorized a peacekeeping force for southern Sudan in March 2005 to monitor an agreement between Khartoum and southern rebels ending a 21-year civil war that killed 2 million people and forced 4 million from their homes.

-- UNIMIS numbers 9,938 total uniformed personnel, including 8,721 troops.

-- UNMIS peacekeepers have faced accusations of hiding in their barracks instead of protecting Sudanese civilians during a flare-up of clashes in the Abyei region in May.

* CHAD: EUFor (From 2008)

-- The European Union's EUFor force has around 3,200 troops in eastern Chad and northern Central African Republic. Its full strength is set at 3,700 and it was set up to protect civilians and aid operations rather than as a peacekeeping mission.

-- But that is a tiny force to protect nearly half a million Sudanese and Chadians forced from their homes by fighting in all three countries, mostly from Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region.

-- EUFor is designed to complement a hybrid AU-UN force deploying in Darfur to help end several years of civil war fuelled by ethnic divisions.

* DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: (MONUC) (From 1999)

-- The U.N. maintains the largest peacekeeping force in the world, with 18,446 uniformed personnel including 16,700 troops, deployed in Congo to help a national army being put together from former warring rebel and militia groups.

-- Around 125 peacekeepers have been killed since 1999.

* ETHIOPIA AND ERITREA: (UNMEE) (2000-2008)

-- The U.N. Security Council voted on July 30 to disband its peacekeeping mission to the volatile border between Eritrea and Ethiopia after Eritrea forced out most of the U.N. troops.

-- The U.N. withdrew most of its peacekeeping force from the border last February after Eritrea cut off fuel supplies. The force had been in place since 2000 after a two-year war between the Horn of Africa neighbors that killed some 70,000 people.

-- Eritrea was angry that the U.N. has not enforced a ruling by an independent boundary commission awarding most disputed border territory, including the town of Badme, to Eritrea.

* IVORY COAST: (UNOCI) (From 1999)

-- Around 11,000 U.N. and French peacekeepers (9,168 are from U.N.) monitor the buffer zone stretching across the middle of the world's top cocoa growing nation after a 2002-2003 civil war split it into a government-run south and rebel-held north.

-- Despite a string of U.N.-backed peace deals, Ivory Coast made little progress toward holding elections. However President Laurent Gbagbo announced in April 2008 that a presidential poll would be held on November 30.

* LIBERIA: (UNMIL) (From 2003)

-- The United Nations Mission in Liberia, which currently numbers 13,382 total uniformed personnel, including 12,031 troops, was established by the Security Council in 2003 to support the implementation of the ceasefire agreement following Liberia's bloody 1989-2003 civil war, which killed an estimated 250,000 people. There have been 109 UNIMIL fatalities.

* WESTERN SAHARA: (MINURSO) (From 1991)

-- Morocco seized Western Sahara after it gained independence from Spain in 1975 and waged a low-intensity guerrilla war with the Polisario Front until the U.N. brokered a ceasefire in 1991 and sent in just over 200 peacekeepers. The U.N.-mediated ceasefire came with the promise of a referendum on Western Sahara, but Morocco has refused to allow a vote.

* SOMALIA: (Pending)

-- The U.N. Security Council in May adopted a resolution to consider sending U.N. troops to replace AU peacekeepers, known as AMISOM, but only if the political and security situation improved.

-- U.N. peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno said on Tuesday he was worried about sending any U.N. troops to Somalia when it is unclear who controls militants on the ground.

-- AMISOM initially authorized the deployment of 8,000 troops but has only 2,600 on the ground at present. The sole suppliers of AMISOM peacekeepers are Uganda and Burundi, though Nigeria and others have offered troops.

Sources: Reuters/United Nations: