No less than 32 United Nations (UN) peacekeeping personnel were slain in deliberate attacks last year, according to the UN Staff Union.
For the ninth year in a row, the mission in Mali, known by its French acronym as MINUSMA, reportedly suffered the most fatalities, with 14 deaths in 2022, followed by 13 killed from the mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The UN Staff Union explained in a press release that among the 32 fatalities were 28 military and four police personnel, including a woman police officer.
“Peacekeepers and the civilian personnel who work side by side with them are on the front lines of the United Nations’ work in the world’s most challenging environments,” UN Staff Union President Aitor Arauz said in the press release.
The document added: “Each malicious attack against UN personnel is a blow to peacekeeping, one of the pillars of the multilateral edifice,” Arauz said. “It is a collective responsibility of the international community to put in place appropriate mechanisms to ensure accountability for these heinous acts, which may constitute war crimes under international law.”
The 32 killed in 2022, according to the UN Staff Union, brings to 494 UN and associated personnel killed in deliberate attacks in the past 13 years from improvised explosive devices, rocket-propelled grenades, artillery fire, mortar rounds, landmines, armed and successive ambushes, convoy attacks, suicide attacks and targeted assassinations.
It said that the peacekeepers who died in 2022, by country, were seven from Egypt, seven from Pakistan, four from Chad, three from Bangladesh, two from India, two from Nigeria, one each from Guinea, Ireland, Jordan, Morocco, Nepal, Russia and Serbia.
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