On May 31, 2016, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon submitted a report [3] to the Security Council in which he recommended the deployment of an additional 2,529 peacekeepers to MINUSMA, the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Mali. The additional peacekeepers would include 2,049 military personnel, raising the overall authorized strength of the military force to 13,289. According to the Secretary-General’s report, these soldiers would enhance MINUSMA’s capabilities by improving intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, force protection, explosives disposal, logistic supply, tactical mobility, and emergency response. The report also called for 480 additional police personnel, increasing the authorized police force to 1,920. The law-enforcement component of the mission is expected to work closely with host-nation personnel, training national police forces, conducting joint patrols, and supporting the establishment of transnational organized crime and counter-terrorism units throughout Mali. In the report, the Secretary-General also called on the Security Council to extend MINUSMA’s mandate until June 30, 2017—a further, one-year extension from that called for by Resolution 2227 [4]. According to a statement [5] by the Secretary-General, the report was released on the same day as two deadly attacks against UN sites in the city of Gao, which left four dead and twelve others injured. These were the latest in a recent history [6] of attacks against UN personnel in Mali following the 2012 Tuareg rebellion in the north and the subsequent French intervention in 2013 to counter Islamic extremists.