MONUSCO gets biggest share of UN peacekeeping budget

Written by defenceWeb/UN
Monday, 01 July 2013 10:47

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) will take the single largest share of the international body’s peacekeeping budget for the 2013/14 year.

MONUSCO, with its soon to become active intervention brigade, has been allocated US$1.53 billion by the international body’s Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budget) for operations in the central African country.

Excluding the latest UN peacekeeping mission, MINUSMA in Mali, the UN will spend more than US$7.15 billion on 13 peacekeeping operations all over the world in the next 12 months.

The exact amount of funding this operation will be given has not yet been finalised.

The transfer of authority ceremony from the African Union (AU) led International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA) to the UN Multi-Dimensional Integrated Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) takes place in the Malian city of Bamako today.

The event will be attended the Special Representative of the AU Commission chairman and AFISMA head, President Pierre Buyoya; ECOWAS Commission president , Kadre Desire Ouedraogo; AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, Ramtane Lamamra; UN Secretary-General special representative and Head of MINUSMA, Bert Koenders and the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Hervé Ladsous. A high-level representative of the Malian transitional government is also expected.

The event will include a re-hatting ceremony with AFISMA troops and police taking off their AFISMA berets for the last time and replacing them with blue UN berets.

UNAMID, the AU/UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur, is on the receiving end of the second largest portion of UN peacekeeping funding at US$1.41 billion.

Other UN peacekeeping operations on the continent and their funding for 2012/14 are UNMISS (South Sudan) US$976.6 million, UNOCI (Côte d’Ivoire) US$617.5 million, UNMIL (Liberia) US$503 million, UNISFA (Abyei, Sudan) US$307 million, UNSOA (Support Office for the AU Mission in Somalia) US$460 million and MINURSO (Western Sahara Referendum Mission) US$61 million.

The Fifth Committee also approved finance for UN missions in Haiti, Cyprus, Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Kosovo.