UNOSOM I

United Nations Operation in Somalia I (UNOSOM I) was the first part of a United Nations (UN) sponsored effort to provide, facilitate, and secure humanitarian relief in Somalia, as well as to monitor the first UN-brokered ceasefire of the Somali Civil War conflict in the early 1990s. The operation was established in April 1992 and ran until its duties were assumed by the Unified Task Force (UNITAF) mission in December 1992. Following the dissolution of UNITAF in May 1993, the subsequent UN mission in Somalia was known as UNOSOM II. BackgroundSomalia sits on the Horn of Africa at the Entrance of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. Djibouti to the North, Ethiopia to the West and Kenya to the South provides its borders of approximately 8.5 million people, more than 98 percent are Somali giving it unusual ethnic homogeneity. More than 45 percent of the population are under 15 years of age. About 70 percent of Somalis are nomads who travel with their livestock herds through Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia. A lack of definite borders contributes to the unresolved land disputes between Somalia and its neighbors. Following the eruption and escalation of the civil war in Somalia in 1991, the UN a