For the first time, a reliable count of Somalia peacekeeping deaths‏

The African Union (AU) leaves it to troop-contributing countries to release information about casualties in its peace operation in Somalia. To date, no country in the AU’s mission has publicly released a comprehensive list of their personnel killed in the battle against the al-Shabaab terror group.

I maintain that this is not a good policy for two main reasons. First, all peacekeepers who make the ultimate sacrifice should have their service publicly recognised. Not doing so is not only immoral – it is also likely to have a negative effect on morale.

Second, concealing peacekeeper deaths plays into al-Shabaab’s hands. The group is often able to dominate the media terrain in the absence of an authoritative and trusted AU or African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) voice. Optimal strategic communications for a peace operation like this would involve the mission’s representatives becoming authoritative voices in the Somali media ecosystem.

My previous report in 2015 made clear that neither of the most widely used armed conflict databases – the Uppsala Conflict Data Program or the Armed Conflict Event and Location Data project – provided plausible numbers for AMISOM’s casualties.

I also wrote that it was unlikely, as some reports suggested, that AMISOM had lost “up to 3,000” or “perhaps over 4,000” peacekeepers.

New evidence has made possible a more accurate estimate of how many African personnel have died since the Somalia mission deployed in March 2007. This new evidence comes from my research into the mission, newly-released financial statements from the AU from 2014 to 2018, a new dataset listing attacks on peacekeepers, and a new listing of dead peacekeepers on the “Memorial Wall of Our Heroes” at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Previous research combined with the new evidence suggests that a plausible estimate of AMISOM’s fatalities between March 2007 and December 2018 could be between 1,483 and 1,884.