Since the first “observation mission” undertaken by the UN in Palestine on 1is May 1948, 4,398 personnel of the organization have died in 71 peacekeeping operations carried out to date. Deaths which affect, in eight out of ten cases, soldiers and whose causes are not always linked to a conflict.
Historically, illness is the most common cause of death among peacekeepers on mission, followed by accidents and, finally, malicious acts. But obviously, this figure varies depending on the nature of the commitment.
MONUSCO (and the missions that preceded it), operating for 25 years in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has a sad record of victims of disease. In the chaotic context of North Kivu, 251 of its agents succumbed in particular, like the local population, to epidemics of cholera, measles, meningitis, smallpox and plague.
The scenario is the same in all countries, mainly African, where the security crisis is coupled with a humanitarian tragedy, of which UN personnel are also victims. Since 2007, the disease has killed 158 UNAMID personnel in Darfur, while, from 2003 to 2018, UNMIL in Liberia lost 151 agents for the same reasons.
After health insecurity, which has killed 1,629 peacekeepers since 1948, it is the accidents that decimate the battalions. 1,387 deaths recorded, with three countries particularly affected: Haiti, Lebanon and Croatia.
Binuh, which has been working since 1999 to restore civil peace in Port-au-Prince, paid the price of a dramatic earthquake in 2010 which, alone, took away 102 of its personnel – it killed more than 200,000 people in total. UNPROFOR, which will mobilize up to 14,000 men for three years in Croatia, will lose more than 100 people there, dead on the road or while handling weapons or ammunition. Finally, 127 members of UNIFIL lost their lives by accident, most often from the road.
What remains are the malicious acts, responsible for 1,134 deaths since 1948, which are the most unacceptable given the nature of UN missions. For the record, Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines “war crime” “intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, equipment, units or vehicles employed in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.”
Since 1999, in North Kivu, the Blue Helmets have lost 192 of their own, deliberately targeted by hostile forces. A record in absolute value. In ten years, 174 people from Minusma in Mali have been killed, the most costly operation in terms of security.
If UNIFIL, which has recorded a total of 337 deaths since 1978, can deplore the most dramatic toll of UN missions, in detail and over time, it ultimately turns out to be relatively protected from violent attacks: 94 deaths in 46 years, it’s still too much, but it’s less than the 174 Minusma men killed in ten years in Mali.
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