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UN political mission in Somalia ends after three decades
Raisedon Zenenga, the UN Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Somalia and Officer-in-Charge of UNTMIS
The UN Transitional Assistance Mission in Somalia, known as UNTMIS, wrapped up its work on Saturday as three decades of United Nations political missions in the country came to an end on 31 October 2026. Raisedon Zenenga, the UN Secretary-General's Deputy Special Representative for Somalia and Officer-in-Charge of UNTMIS, delivered remarks at a ceremony marking the closure. UN News reported the mission's end and those remarks.
The mechanism of the handover is institutional rather than ceremonial. Successive political missions accompanied Somalia through critical stages of its peacebuilding and state-building journey, supporting Somali-led efforts to restore governance, rebuild institutions, and foster national reconciliation. With UNTMIS closed, Somali institutions now take on full responsibility for the country's recovery, with support from UN agencies already working in the country.
That design sets the scale of the claim the ceremony can carry. Somalia has undergone a profound transformation since the early 1990s, when the collapse of central state institutions and the outbreak of civil war ushered in years of conflict, instability, and humanitarian crises. Zenenga said Somalia today possesses national and federal institutions that did not exist when the UN's political engagement began, and that progress has been made in state formation, political inclusion, constitutional processes, human rights frameworks, and the development of governance structures that enable Somali-led decision-making.
He added that continued engagement by the international community will remain important to sustaining that progress and addressing outstanding priorities. The political mission has ended; the partnership that remains is the work of Somali institutions and the UN agencies still present in the country.