Valerie Place | |
---|---|
Born | 24 March 1969 Walkinstown, Dublin, Ireland |
Died | 22 February 1993 23) Mogadishu, Somalia | (aged
Valerie Place (24 March 1969 - 22 February 1993) was an Irish nurse and overseas aid worker, who was the second western aid worker to be killed in Somalia during the conflict and famine in the early 1990s. [1]
Valerie Place was born at 20 St Brendan's Crescent, Walkinstown, Dublin on 24 March 1969. She was the third child of Patrick, coachbuilder, and Margaret Place (née Byrne). She had three brothers and two sisters. Place attended St Paul's secondary school, Greenhills, and was trained as a nurse at St. James's Hospital, Dublin from 1987 to 1990. She worked for a period with Caring and Sharing Association (CASA). [1]
Place went to Somalia in September 1992 as a volunteer worker on a two-year contract with Concern, the Irish overseas aid agency. Concern had been part of the international emergency response in Somalia since May 1992. Place was one of 70 Irish aid workers based in 17 locations across Somalia. She was the supervisor of a feeding station for 2,500 children and an adjoining school in Mogadishu. The aid workers worked with local guards, and later the Unified Task Force of 30,000 troops to secure the areas for the distribution of humanitarian relief. The task force struggled to protect the aid convoys from attacks from armed groups. [1]
Place was travelling in a party, which included Rev. Aengus Finucane, on 22 February 1993 to attend the opening of a school in Wanlewein for 1,200 when the party was ambushed. Place was fatally wounded when her car, the last in the convoy, was ambushed at Afgoi. She was airlifted to a military hospital in Mogadishu by a US Air Force helicopter, but died within minutes of her arrival there. [1] [2] [3] Place's funeral at the Church of the Holy Spirit, Greenhills, Dublin was attended by 2,000 people, including Irish President Mary Robinson. Robinson had met Place during her visit to Somalia in October 1992. [1] [4]
At the time of her death, Place was the second western aid worker killed in Somalia, after the death of Sean Devereux in January 1993. [5] Place's death caused demands that the task force do more to protect aid workers and to disarm the Somali factions, as well as prompting fresh criticism of the UN mandate in its failure to support military intervention with political initiatives. As the situation worsened, American troops withdrew in March 1994, and the UN disengaged in March 1995. [1]
The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs founded the Valerie Place commemorative scholarship in March 1993, which brings Somali teachers and nurses to train in Ireland. In June 1997, St. James's Hospital school of nursing unveiled a portrait and a classroom dedicated to her memory. [1] There is also a mural to Place in Mogadishu. [4] [6]
The Battle of Mogadishu, also known as the Black Hawk Down incident, was part of Operation Gothic Serpent. It was fought on 3–4 October 1993, in Mogadishu, Somalia, between forces of the United States—supported by UNOSOM II—against the forces of the Somali National Alliance (SNA) and armed irregular citizens of south Mogadishu.
Humanitarian aid workers belonging to United Nations organisations, PVOs / NGOs or the Red Cross / Red Crescent have traditionally enjoyed both international legal protection, and de facto immunity from attack by belligerent parties. However, ' attacks on humanitarian workers have occasionally occurred, and become more frequent since the 1990s and 2000s. In 2017, the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) documented 139 humanitarian workers killed in intentional attacks out of the estimated global population of 569,700 workers. In every year since 2013, more than 100 humanitarian workers were killed. This is attributed to a number of factors, including the increasing number of humanitarian workers deployed, the increasingly unstable environments in which they work, and the erosion of the perception of neutrality and independence. In 2012 road travel was seen to be the most dangerous context, with kidnappings of aid workers quadrupling in the last decade, reaching more aid workers victims than any other form of attack.
The 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, more commonly known as Black Hawk Down, was detailed by the U.S. Army and lasted from October 3 to October 4 in 1993.
Operation Gothic Serpent was a military operation conducted in Mogadishu, Somalia, by an American force code-named Task Force Ranger during the Somali Civil War in 1993. The primary objective of the operation was to capture Mohamed Farrah Aidid, leader of the Somali National Alliance who was wanted by the UNOSOM II in response to his attacks against United Nations troops. The operation took place from August to October 1993 and was led by US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).
The United Nations Operation in Somalia II was the second phase of the United Nations intervention in Somalia and took place from March 1993 until March 1995, following the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991. UNOSOM II carried on from the transitory United States-controlled (UN-sanctioned) Unified Task Force (UNITAF), which had been preceded by UNOSOM I. Notably, UNOSOM II embarked on a nation-building mission, diverging from its predecessors. As delineated in UNSCR 814, the operation's objectives were to aid in relief provision and economic rehabilitation, foster political reconciliation, and re-establish political and civil administrations across Somalia.
Operation United Shield was the codename of a military operation, conducted 9 January to 3 March 1995, bringing a conclusion to the United Nations Operation in Somalia II. Commanded by the United States, two ships of the Pakistan Navy, five ships of the Italian Navy and six ships of the United States Navy formed a Combined Task Force (CTF) ensuring the safe evacuation of all UN Peacekeeping Forces from Somalia.
The Unified Task Force (UNITAF) was a United States-led, United Nations-sanctioned multinational force which operated in Somalia from 5 December 1992 until 4 May 1993. A United States initiative, UNITAF was charged with carrying out United Nations Security Council Resolution 794 to create a protected environment for conducting humanitarian operations in the southern half of the country.
The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) was a regional peacekeeping mission operated by the African Union with the approval of the United Nations Security Council. It was mandated to support transitional governmental structures, implement a national security plan, train the Somali security forces, and to assist in creating a secure environment for the delivery of humanitarian aid. As part of its duties, AMISOM supported the Federal Government of Somalia's forces in their battle against Al-Shabaab militants.
Leonella Sgorbati, born Rosa Maria Sgorbati, was an Italian religious sister of the Consolata Missionaries who served in the missions in both Kenya and in Somalia. She was murdered in Somalia not long after the Regensburg lecture of Pope Benedict XVI and after having worked on the continent for over three decades. Her main attention was on nursing and educating prospective nurses while she also tended to the needs of children in a children's hospital that she frequented.
Various international and local diplomatic and humanitarian efforts in the Somali Civil War have been in effect since the conflict first began in the early 1990s. The latter include diplomatic initiatives put together by the African Union, the Arab League and the European Union, as well as humanitarian efforts led by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UNICEF, the World Food Programme (WFP), the Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) and the Somali Red Crescent Society (SRCS).
The timeline of events in the War in Somalia during 2007 is set out below.
The 2009 timeline of events in the Somalia War (2006–2009) during January 2009 is set out below. From the beginning of February the timeline of events in the Somali Civil War (2009–present) is set out following the conclusion of the previous phase of the civil war.
Aengus Finucane was a Roman Catholic missionary of the Spiritan Fathers order, who organized food shipments from Ireland to the Igbo people during the Nigerian Civil War. His younger brother Jack Finucane also became a Holy Ghost priest, and a sister of theirs became a nun.
Occurring between July 2011 and mid-2012, a severe drought affected the entire East African region. Said to be "the worst in 60 years", the drought caused a severe food crisis across Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya that threatened the livelihood of 9.5 million people. Many refugees from southern Somalia fled to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, where crowded, unsanitary conditions together with severe malnutrition led to a large number of deaths. Other countries in East Africa, including Sudan, South Sudan and parts of Uganda, were also affected by a food crisis.
Noramfaizul Mohd Nor was the first journalist from Malaysia to be fatally injured while on a dangerous assignment abroad. The attack occurred on 2 September 2011 in Mogadishu, Somalia, while Noramfaizul was reporting for Bernama TV on a humanitarian mission organised by the Islamic charity Kelab Putera 1Malaysia. An AMISOM investigation later concluded that he was accidentally killed by one of its peacekeepers while travelling in a Malaysian convoy.
This is a 2016 timeline of events in the Somali Civil War (2009–present).
This is a 2018 timeline of events in the Somali Civil War (2009–present).
Almaas Elman was a Somali-Canadian humanitarian aid worker, the eldest daughter of a prominent family of humanitarian aid-workers. Her parents were Elman Ali Ahmed and Fartuun Adan. She, her mother and her sisters emigrated to Canada in the early 1990s. Her father was gunned down in 1996. Her mother helped found the Elman Peace Center. One of her sisters Ilwad Elman was a short-listed candidate for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. Her husband, a Somali-Swedish tech entrepreneur, was Zakaria Hersi. They married in 2017.
The June 5th 1993 attack on Pakistanis was a major confrontation that occurred concurrently in different parts of the Somali capital of Mogadishu, between Somali citizens & militias against the Pakistani peacekeeping contingent of UNOSOM II.
On 13 June 1993, an element of the Pakistani contingent of UNOSOM II opened fire with a machine gun onto a crowd of protestors in Mogadishu, Somalia, shooting approximately 70 Somalis. At least 20 people were killed in the attack, including women and children, and more than 50 others were wounded. The shooting took place in the aftermath of the 5 June 1993 attack on the Pakistanis a week prior.