‘Unprecedented’: UN needs to pull nearly 13,000 peacekeepers out of Mali by December 31
- UN peacekeeping mission has until the end of 2023 to exit Mali after a decade struggling to stabilise the country’s security environment
- The 13,000-person mission known as MINUSMA was ordered to withdraw earlier this year under the demand of Mali’s ruling junta
The United Nations is in the throes of what Secretary General Antonio Guterres calls an “unprecedented” six-month exit from Mali on orders of the West African nation’s military junta, which has brought in mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group to help fight an Islamic insurgency.
The UN special envoy for Mali, El-Ghassim Wane, laid out the scale of the operation to the UN Security Council on Monday: all 12,947 UN peacekeepers and police must be sent home, their 12 camps and one temporary base handed over to the government, and 1,786 civilian staff terminated by the December 31 deadline.
Mali’s UN ambassador Issa Konfourou said the government is cooperating with the UN peacekeeping mission, known as MINUSMA, but it will not extend the deadline.
The United Nations also needs to move out approximately 5,500 sea containers of equipment and 4,000 vehicles that belong to the UN and the countries that contributed personnel to MINUSMA, the fourth largest of the UN’s dozen peacekeeping operations, Wane said.
That process has begun but will continue during a “liquidation” period that will begin on January 1, 2024 and last for 18 months, with the UN keeping police in the three hubs in the capital, Bamako, Gao and Timbuktu where the equipment is being gathered.