UN, as in UNspeakable Depravity
UN, as in UNspeakable Depravity
Why am I so hard on the only forum where international disputes can be resolved peacefully? Because they’re awfully hard on little girls:
The United Nations will take action against any employees who sexually abuse girls in Liberia, an official said Tuesday in response accusations that aid workers and peacekeepers were trading food for sex with girls left homeless by war.
The aid group Save the Children, which surveyed nearly 160 children and about 170 adults who were either living in camps or had recently returned home, said Monday they were repeatedly told of girls having sex with older men in exchange for money, food and other goods.
The accused included peacekeeping troops, aid workers and other powerful men in the community. The group’s report did not give the nationality of the aid workers or peacekeepers involved. About 17,000 U.N. peacekeepers are based in Liberia.
Christiane Berthiaume, spokeswoman for the World Food Program, told reporters she had great respect for two Liberian women who made allegations against WFP employees in interviews with the British Broadcasting Corporation, but she said it was unclear whether the alleged abusers worked directly for the U.N. agency or for a local charity distributing WFP food.
“If the accusations are true, we will take the most severe measures and ask, of course, for the arrest of the guilty,” Berthiaume said.
She said the agency spends a lot of time training the people it works with — many of them hired locally — telling them, “We won’t tolerate any abuses.”
Damien Personnaz, a spokesman for the U.N. Children’s Fund, said UNICEF is investigating the allegations because it is the lead U.N. agency in Liberia, but has no reason to doubt Save the Children’s report.
If the allegations prove true, “other measures will be taken,” he said.
Marie Heuze, chief spokeswoman in Geneva for the United Nations, said U.N. investigators so far reported eight cases of sexual exploitation since the beginning of the year.
U.N. agencies are helping hundreds of thousands of Liberians recover from years of civil war.
One person’s recovery “from years of civil war” is another person’s child rape. The article helpfully neglects to mention that the UN is hardly a first-time offender
Allegations of sexual abuse against U.N. peacekeepers remain unacceptably high and a ban on using prostitutes is meeting opposition from some troops and staff, senior U.N. officials said Thursday.
Despite the U.N.’s policy of zero tolerance and zero contact for peacekeepers, much more must be done to implement the new code of conduct and especially to try to change the previous culture of indifference to sexual exploitation, the officials said.
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Cases of sexual abuse have also been reported in other peacekeeping missions from Bosnia and Kosovo to Cambodia, East Timor and West Africa.
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A report in October by Refugees International said a “hyper-masculine culture” has evolved among U.N. peacekeepers who bond together and construct a “wall of silence” to protect themselves from outside criticism. Even in countries where prostitution is illegal, the solicitation of prostitutes by men in U.N. peacekeeping missions is considered commonplace, and colleagues are reluctant to report sexual misconduct, the report said.
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The United Nations must act not only to pursue justice but to establish institutions, training and oversight bodies to ensure that there is no further abuse, he said.
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The United Nations is acting on many fronts — but … it will take three or four years to change the culture and end sexual exploitation.
Three or four years? Castration takes only seconds, if you’re not fussy about anesthesia. Of course it’s hard to neuter an institution that doesn’t have balls in the first place.
What’s a few hookers, you ask? Can’t a man unwind? You asked for it:
U.N. peacekeepers threatened U.N. investigators investigating allegations of sexual misconduct in Congo and sought to bribe witnesses to change incriminating testimony, a confidential U.N. draft report says.
The 34-page report, which was obtained by The Washington Post, accuses U.N. peacekeepers from Morocco, Pakistan and Nepal of seeking to obstruct U.N. efforts to investigate a sexual abuse scandal that has damaged the United Nations’ standing in Congo.
The report documents 68 cases of alleged rape, prostitution and pedophilia by U.N. peacekeepers from Pakistan, Uruguay, Morocco, Tunisia, South Africa and Nepal. U.N. officials say they have uncovered more than 150 allegations of sexual misconduct throughout the country as part of a widening investigation into sexual abuse by U.N. personnel that has plagued the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping mission, U.N. officials said.
“Sexual exploitation and abuse, particularly prostitution of minors, is widespread and long-standing,” says a draft of the internal July report, which has not previously been made public. “Moreover, all of the major contingents appear to be implicated.”
THIS ARTICLE APPEARED IN DECEMBER 2004 IN THE WASHINGTON POST and it’s still going on.