Military observer

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Military observer , abbreviated to MILOB for Military Observer or UNMO for United Nations Military Observer , are military but unarmed forces of the peacekeeping forces of the United Nations , of peacekeeping missions of other institutions such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the African Union (AU) or by neutral states whose task it is to monitor military activities during an armed conflict or after a peace agreement . The aim of their work is in particular to monitor compliance with international humanitarian law or the provisions of ceasefire agreements or peace treaties by the conflicting parties or contracting parties.

Activities of military observers include, for example, observing and monitoring troop movements or the transfer of materials, verifying military units and supporting communication between the various parties to the conflict and between the peacekeeping forces and the parties to the conflict. Other important tasks are questioning the civilian population and monitoring the supply situation, as well as recording and reporting their observations to the management of the respective mission or to the headquarters of the United Nations . Military observers are therefore regarded as the "eyes and ears" of a peace mission. When deployed, they appear in the uniform of their home army, possibly supplemented by the blue beret of the UN peacekeeping forces, a yellow beret for military observers of the OSCE or a green beret for the peacekeeping forces of the AU.

From 1948, the start of the UN peacekeeping operations, until the end of 2018, 90 military observers lost their lives on missions in the UN peacekeeping operations department and five military observers from other peacekeeping missions, around a quarter of them as part of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in the Middle East .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. United Nations Peacekeeping: Fatalities by Mission and Appointment Type (up to 31 Mar 2014) ( PDF document , approx. 32KB).