UN shame over sex scandal
.. -->proximic_content_on-->The international
organisation says that almost 200 of its peacekeepers around the world
have been disciplined for sex offences - including rape and child abuse
- but not one seems to have been prosecuted.. -->proximic_content_off-->
Sunday, 7 January 2007
Nearly 200 United Nations peacekeepers have been disciplined in the
past three years for sex offences ranging from rape to assaults on
minors, the UN has admitted. Yet none appears to have been prosecuted.
.. -->proximic_content_on-->
Senior UN officials said on Friday that 319 soldiers, police or
civilians serving on missions have been investigated for sexual
misconduct over the past three years, and 180 have been dismissed or
repatriated.
These numbers do not include allegations levelled at
members of the UN's own staff. According to an internal UN report,
these total 91, including 13 alleged to have had sex with minors, 15
who gave jobs in return for sex, 17 who had sex with prostitutes, five
who face allegations of rape and one person who is alleged to have
committed sexual assault.
The internal report, which was
published in May last year, presents data on allegations of sexual
exploitation and abuse within the UN system between January and
December 2006. It also says that 40 UN staff were alleged to have
carried out other forms of sexual abuse.
Presenting the figures
about the 319 personnel investigated, the UN Assistant
Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, Jane Holl Lute, said that the
inquiries had resulted in the summary dismissal of 18 civilians, and
the repatriation of 17 international police and 144 military personnel.
However, she did not cite any prosecutions.
According to the UN
Department of Peacekeeping Operations, during the first 10 months of
2006, 63 per cent of misconduct allegations involving peacekeeping
personnel related to sexual exploitation and abuse, a third involving
prostitution. A new anti-prostitution campaign is about to start, "to
target what has been a troubling pathway for sexual exploitation and
abuse in the missions", Ms Lute said.
With nearly 200,000 people
from more than 100 countries rotating through the peacekeeping missions
every year, some people "are going to behave badly", she told a news
conference. "What's different now is... our determination to stay with
this problem... and constantly improve our ability to deal with it."
The
issue of sexual offences committed by UN personnel made headlines
around the world with claims in early 2005 that peacekeepers in Congo
had sex with Congolese women and girls, usually in exchange for food or
small sums of money. Jordan's UN ambassador, Prince Zeid al-Hussein,
wrote a report several months later that described the UN military arm
as deeply flawed. It recommended withholding the salaries of the guilty
and requiring nations to pursue legal action against perpetrators. It
said abuses had been reported in missions ranging from Bosnia and
Kosovo to Cambodia, East Timor, West Africa and Congo.
The UN
peacekeeping department instituted a new code of conduct for
peacekeepers and new training for officers and all UN personnel, and it
reinforced messages of "zero tolerance" for sexual abuse. The
Peacekeeping Department said in a memo: "In an environment where around
a third of civilians in missions are new at any one time and contingent
members change every six months, there is a constant need for vigilance
and particularly training on standards of conduct."
But serious
allegations continue to surface in many places where UN peacekeepers
work. Investigations last year by the BBC claimed that children had
also been subjected to rape and prostitution by UN peacekeepers in
Haiti and Liberia as far back as 2004.
In one case, an
11-year-old girl told of sexual abuse by peacekeepers outside the gates
of the presidential palace in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. A
14-year-old girl interviewed by the BBC described how she was abducted
and raped inside a UN naval base in Haiti in 2004. The UN dismissed the
allegation due to lack of evidence, and the alleged attacker was
allowed to return to his home country.
In May 2006, another BBC
investigation discovered systematic abuse in Liberia. Food, it was
claimed, had been given out to teenage refugees by UN peacekeepers in
return for sex.
A French UN logistics expert based in Congo was
found to have shot pornographic videos and was about to rape a
12-year-old girl when police raided his home there in December 2004. UN
staffers from Morocco were found to have made 82 local women and girls
pregnant, according to a report by one international group in 2004. The
same year, it was reported that another UN soldier accused of rape
there was apparently hidden in the barracks for a year. UN insiders
also told in 2004 of two Russian pilots who had paid young girls with
jars of mayonnaise and jam to have sex with them.
Last week, a
new case emerged, in Sudan. Children as young as 12 were systematically
forced to have sex with at least four Bangladeshi peacekeepers in the
town of Juba, in south Sudan, for 18 months despite complaints to
senior officers.
According to one newspaper investigation,
peacekeeping and civilian staff based in Juba are regularly picking up
children using their UN vehicles and offering them money in return for
sex. "A man in a white car drove past, I saw that it was a UN car
because it was white with black letters on it," a 14-year-old boy
called Jonas told The Daily Telegraph. "The man had a badge on his
clothes. When he stopped the car, we got out, he put a blindfold on me
and started to abuse me. It was very painful and went on for a long
time. When it was over, we went back to the place we had been and he
pushed me out of the car and left."
On the Sudanese case, the
Department of Peacekeeping Operations corrected information it had
supplied last week that four UN peacekeepers from Bangladesh had been
sent home and 13 other peacekeepers serving in southern Sudan were
under investigation for alleged serious misconduct, including sexual
exploitation and abuse.
According to the department, there are
currently 13 sexual exploitation and abuse cases under investigation by
the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services in Sudan (OIOS), half in
southern Sudan.
These cases include an investigation into an
allegation of sexual exploitation and abuse in June 2006 against a
Bangladeshi peacekeeper in southern Sudan. While the OIOS investigation
is continuing, the department said the peacekeeper was sent home and
dismissed from the army.
In addition, three Bangladeshi guards on
duty when the alleged incident took place, and two officers, were
repatriated for poor supervision or poor command. The Bangladeshi army
dismissed one guard, lowered the rank of the two others, and severely
reprimanded the two officers, the Peacekeeping Department said.
Prosecutions
of peacekeepers are rare. Under UN regulations, servicemen and women
can only be prosecuted in their home countries, not in the country
where they are serving. In 1997, a military court sentenced two Belgian
paratroopers to a month in jail and a £200 fine for roasting a Somali
boy over a brazier. Another Belgian soldier is reported to have forced
a young Somali boy to eat pork, drink salt water and then eat his own
vomit. Pictures also appeared in the 1990s of Italian soldiers abusing
and raping a Somali girl.
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