RIGHTS: U.N. Targets Sexual Exploitation by Peacekeepers

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 2002 (IPS) - The United Nations is cracking down on the harassment and sexual exploitation of women and children by peacekeeping troops, a senior official said Thursday.

Under-Secretary-General Jean-Marie Guehenno told the Security Council that the world body has advised member states that they should “take appropriate disciplinary and, if needed, criminal action, against their nationals who commit such acts”.

He said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has laid down a “zero tolerance” policy toward peacekeepers involved in acts of sexual exploitation and trafficking of women and young girls.

At the end of June, the United Nations had 46,460 peacekeepers from 87 countries.

In the 1990s it was revealed that peacekeepers committed sexual abuse in several U.N. missions in Asia, Africa and Europe. In Bosnia, several U.N. troops were accused of taking part in black marketeering and prostitution.

Disciplinary action has usually been left to national authorities that provide troops to the United Nations. The U.N. has no capacity to take disciplinary action, beyond sending them home in disgrace.

In her 1996 study, ‘Impact of Armed Conflict on Children’, Gracha Machel said that in some war-torn countries, children have become victims of prostitution following the arrival of peacekeeping forces.

The former first lady of Mozambique admitted that in her own country, soldiers of the U.N. Operation in Mozambique (ONUMOZ) recruited girls aged 12 to 18 years into prostitution.

After a U.N. Commission of Inquiry confirmed the allegations, the soldiers who were accused of misconduct were sent home.

“In six out of 12 country studies on sexual exploitation of children in situations of armed conflict prepared for the present report, the arrival of peacekeeping troops has been associated with a rapid rise in child prostitution,” Machel said.

In Cambodia, local newspapers linked the rise of child prostitution in that country to the presence of troops attached to the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) during March 1992-September 1993.

Guehenno, the head of U.N. peacekeeping operations, told a special meeting of the Security Council that the United Nations would not tolerate gender-related crimes.

“Traditionally, we have underestimated this point, because we wrongly assume that conflict and peace are gender-blind. They are not,” he said. Guehenno said that certain crimes, related to conflict settings, are specifically targeted at women and girls.

In February, Annan expressed outrage over reports of widespread abuse of women and young girls in refugee camps in West Africa.

The abuses were all the more heinous, he said, because they were committed not only by relief workers for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) but also by U.N. peacekeepers and staff.

The young women, mostly in camps in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, were sexually abused in return for food and medicine, according to a joint report by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Save the Children, a London-based relief agency.

The 19-page study, ‘Sexual Violence and Exploitation: the Experience of Refugee Children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone’, included testimonies from children recorded during a 40-day mission last year to West Africa by an assessment team from UNHCR and Save the Children.

Noeleen Heyzer, executive director of the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), told the Security Council that the United Nations should address the “glaring gaps in women’s protection”.

Two U.N. experts who travelled to 14 conflict areas were overwhelmed by the magnitude of violence suffered by women before, during and after conflict, she said.

“They heard testimony of gang rapes and wombs punctured by guns,” she said, adding, “impunity prevails for these widespread crimes against women in war”.

The findings and recommendations of the two experts – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Elisabeth Rehn – will be made public in October to mark the second anniversary of a landmark Security Council resolution on ‘Women, Peace and Security’.

“We all know of how the forced exclusion of Afghan women from public space, and the risks they took to provide schooling and medical care came to symbolise the crisis in that country. But indicators of this kind are not mentioned or even systematically collected,” Heyzer said.

She also complained about the absence of women as advisers and peacekeepers in U.N. operations.

“The experts found that a gender perspective is not sufficiently incorporated into U.N. peace operations. Rather, it is isolated in the form of a single staff person or a small unit lacking sufficient seniority and resources,” Heyzer added.

Outlining the steps taken so far, Guehenno said that since March 1999, the U.N. Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina has created a trafficking operations project.

So far, it has conducted over 400 operations against bars and brothels, interviewing 1,442 women and girls and offering them assistance with repatriation.

The U.N. Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has promulgated a Trafficking in Human Persons Regulation, specifically to protect victims, he added.