Families of Somalia African Union casualties paid $200m

by | Apr 19, 2023

Atmis soldiers

Police officers of the African Union’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia from Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ghana and Zambia gather at a base in Mogadishu on September 17, 2019. PHOTO | TINA SMOLE | AFP

Summary

  • AU Commission for Somalia revealed the massive human losses suffered by East African troops in Somalia.
  • In February, it emerged that soldiers who had served in the 2018 to 2022 missions had not been fully paid.
  • AU’s financials for 2021 show amount paid to troop-contributing countries almost tripled from $37.59 million to $100.8 million

About $200 million could have been paid out in compensation to families of African Union (AU) peacekeepers killed or injured in Somalia since 2007, in what has been billed as the world’s deadliest peacekeeping mission.

More than $175 million of this has gone to compensate the families of soldiers killed on the battlefront, and a further $15 million to those injured or maimed in mission to rout Somalia-based militant group al Shabaab.

The AU has also disclosed that at least 3,500 troops from Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Ethiopia have died in Somalia over the past 16 years in a bloody peace mission that has yet to achieve its intended results.

Uganda was the first country to put boots on the ground in 2007 with the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom), which mutated into the African Union Transitional Mission in Somalia (Atmis) in April 2022.

The Easten African

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