UNAMID Hands Over Residual Administrative Services to RSCE

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1 Mar 2022

UNAMID Hands Over Residual Administrative Services to RSCE

Mark Kaheru

The United Nations - African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) handed over Financial Management and Human Resources residual liquidation activities to Regional Service Center in Entebbe (RSCE) on Monday 28th February.

On 22 December 2020, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2559 (2020) to end the UNAMID mandate on 31 December 2020, with full withdrawal to be completed by 30 June 2021. UNAMID commenced its liquidation phase on 1 July 2021.

UNAMID was a joint African Union (AU) and United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission formally approved by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1769 on 31 July 2007 to bring stability to the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan while peace talks on a final settlement were ongoing. UNAMID has been in service to Sudan for the last 15 years.

On completion of all field activities in Sudan, UNAMID was to transfer all residual administrative activities to the Department of Operational Support, Division of Special Activities with a target handover date of 1 January 2022.

In his remarks at the handover ceremony, Houston Fergusson, Officer-in-Charge/Director Liquidation Team narrated the critical events of 24–29 December 2021, which led to the full relocation of International Staff and the repatriation of the United Nations Guard Unit. As a result of those events, the handover date for residual activities was revised to not later than 31 March 2022 and communicated to the Government of the Republic of Sudan.

He also thanked the RSCE and UNAMID teams for facilitating a smooth drawdown of the mission and attributed some of the success to the weekly Finance and Human Resources meetings.

Paulin Djomo, RSCE Director a.i. also commented on the smooth transition and clarified that the work was not yet complete. The RSCE is hosting a handful of UNAMID staff who will remain available to support RSCE as required up until 31 March 2022, after which all issues will be addressed to the Director of the Division for Special Activities.     

UNAMID also handed over their contracts' residual liquidation activities to the Global Procurement Support Section (GPSS) in the afternoon of the same day.