UN honors Late Chancy Chitete with Highest Peacekeeping Award

The Malawian soldier Chancy Chitete will be honoured with the United Nation’s (UN) highest peacekeeping award, dubbed as “Captain Mbaye Diagne Medal for Exceptional Courage”. He will be awarded posthumously in New York, US on May 24 2019.

About Chancy Chitete

• The late UN peacekeeper from Mali is being honoured for his “brave and selfless” action demonstrated in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
• In an operation undertaken November 2018, he sacrificed his life while saving his fellow comrade ‘blue helmet’ during operation against local armed group named Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). The ADF is an armed force in DRC which had been terrorizing civilians and disrupting the UN’s ongoing efforts to halt and treat spread of the deadly Ebola virus.

About UN’s Highest Peacekeeping Award

• It is officially known as ‘Captain Mbaye Diagne Medal for Exceptional Courage’.
• It was established in 2014 and is named after Captain Mbaye Diagne of Senegal, who served with former UN Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) and saved thousands of Rwandans from death in 1994 genocide.
• It is awarded to uniformed (police, military) and civilian personnel who have demonstrated exceptional courage, in face of extreme danger, and fulfilled mandate of their missions in service of humanity and United Nations.
• The awarding of Medal to Chitite, will be the first time that the actions of a UN peacekeeper have been found to meet standard set by Captain Diagne.