United Nations Operation in Somalia I

United Nations Operation in Somalia I (UNOSOM I) was the first part of a United Nations (UN) sponsored effort to provide, facilitate, and secure humanitarian relief in Somalia, as well as to monitor the first UN-brokered ceasefire of the Somali Civil War conflict in the early 1990s.

The operation was established in April 1992 and ran until its duties were assumed by the UNITAF mission in December 1992. Following the dissolution of UNITAF in May 1993, the subsequent UN mission in Somalia was known as UNOSOM II.

Following the eruption and escalation of the civil war in Somalia in 1991, the UN and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) intervened, citing the war and starvation. Of the Somali population of 10 million people, over half were in severe danger of starvation and malnutrition-related disease, mostly in the drought-stricken rural areas.

Another 1.5 million were judged at moderate risk of malnutrition. Three hundred thousand people died outright in the early months of 1992 and another 3 million fled the country as refugees.

The UN was engaged in Somalia from early in 1991 when the civil strife began. UN personnel were withdrawn on several occasions during sporadic flare-ups of violence. A series of Security Council resolutions (733, 746) and diplomatic visits eventually helped impose a ceasefire between the two key factions, signed at the end of March 1992. These efforts were aided by other international bodies, such as the Organisation for African Unity, the League of Arab States and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

The UN, with the active support of all rebel faction leaders, felt that some sort of peacekeeping force would be required to uphold the ceasefire and assist the humanitarian relief effort, in conjunction with other relief agencies and NGOs. By the end of April 1992, the Security Council adopted Resolution 751.

This provided for the establishment of a security force of 50 UN troops in Somalia to monitor the ceasefire. This detachment would be known as the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) and it existed at the consent of those parties who had been represented in the ceasefire.

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