A displaced family in Bouar, Central African Republic. As of February 2014, the town and region around Bouar were experiencing ethnic cleansing, principally against Muslim civilians. Credit: Nicolas Rost for OCHA

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 3 2015 (IPS)

The United Nations, which came under heavy fire for its failure to act swiftly on charges of sexual abuse by French troops in the Central African Republic (CAR) last year, has decided to set up an External Independent Review (EIR) to probe these allegations.

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters Wednesday the review will be broad in scope and the composition of the team will be announced next week.“If Mr. Ban Ki-moon and Member States want to rescue zero tolerance, they must cleanse the UN system of negligence and misconduct once and for all." -- AIDS-Free World

He said the EIR will not only examine the treatment of the specific report of abuse in the Central African Republic – by soldiers not affiliated with the United Nations – but also a broad range of systemic issues related to how the U.N. responds to serious information of this kind.

The establishment of the review panel is also the result of strong criticism from civil society organisations (CSOs), which lambasted the United Nations for its alleged “cover-up” and for not responding fast enough.

Among the allegations were charges that French soldiers traded food in exchange for sex with starving minors and teenagers.

Paula Donovan, co-director of AIDS-Free World, who helped break the story of a long-suppressed report on sexual abuse in CAR, told IPS she welcomes the appointment of the EIR and “it was a step in the right direction.”

But, she cautioned, no one from the U.N. staff or the Secretariat should be associated with the team, primarily because they cannot investigate themselves.

Donovan said she sincerely hopes this EIR is not a thinly-disguised excuse to allow U.N. staffers to refuse to comment on any ongoing or future sexual abuses on the ground because “the panel is at work.”

Amongst the many demands by CSOs was for any review panel to be armed with subpoena powers in order to strengthen the scope of the investigation.

As has been stated over the past few weeks, Dujarric told reporters, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon “is deeply disturbed by the allegations of sexual abuse by soldiers in the CAR, as well as allegations of how this was handled by the various parts of the U.N. system involved.”

His intention in setting up this review is to ensure that the United Nations does not fail the victims of sexual abuse, especially when committed by those who are meant to protect them.

In a statement released Wednesday, AIDS-Free World, which over the last several weeks has launched its Code Blue campaign demanding answers for the sexual abuse in CAR, said the secretary-general has three challenges.

First, this must be a truly external and independent inquiry. No member of existing U.N. staff should be appointed to investigate nor to act as the investigators’ secretariat.

Second, it must be understood that top members of the secretary-general’s own staff will have to be subject to investigation. This must go right up to the level of under-secretaries general (USG).

No one can be excluded, whether the director of the Ethics Office or the USG of the Office of Internal Oversight Services or the secretary-general’s own Chef de Cabinet.

“It would appear that all of them acted inappropriately in response to the dreadful events in CAR,” the statement said.

Third, the reference in the secretary-general’s announcement to a review of ‘the broad range of systemic issues’ is crucial to the inquiry.

“What happened in the Central African Republic was an atrocity, but the fact that the U.N. stood silent for nearly a year after its own discovery of widespread peacekeeper sexual abuse (even if by non-U.N. troops) is itself a bitter commentary on the Secretary-General’s declared policy of ‘zero tolerance’,” the statement said.

“If Mr. Ban Ki-moon and Member States want to rescue zero tolerance, they must cleanse the UN system of negligence and misconduct once and for all.”

Last year, there were more than 50 cases of sexual abuse at the hands of U.N.-supported field personnel, although the actual number is said to be far higher.

The existence of diplomatic immunity is said to allow perpetrators to go unpunished and avoid legal constraints.

A longstanding proposal, going to back to 2008, for an international convention to punish those accused of sex crimes in U.N. operations overseas never got off the ground.

But against the backdrop of the current campaign, called Code Blue, the proposal may be revived, even though it could be shot down by developing countries which provide most of the soldiers in the 16 peacekeeping operations currently under way, with an estimated total of 106,595 military personnel and 17,000 civilian staff.

The largest contributors of peacekeepers include Bangladesh (9,307 troops), Pakistan (8,163), India (8,112), Ethiopia (7,864) and Rwanda (5,575), according to the latest U.N. figures.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Different jurisdictions and immunities apply to civilian and military personnel, made more obscure by a lack of transparency and detail in the U.N.’s reporting of abuse cases. Photo: UN Photo/Pasqual Gorriz

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, May 13 2015 (IPS)

“We can really argue as much as we want but if we put ourselves in the skin of victims, we just have to do something to stop this.”

This was Graça Machel’s appeal at the launch of Code Blue, the campaign to end impunity for sexual violence by United Nations (U.N.) peacekeeping personnel Wednesday.“Each country will act according to what it thinks is appropriate and more often than not rather than a full-fledged investigation you simply see a plane arriving and a bunch of people being put on a plane and disappearing." -- Lt. General Roméo Dallaire

Machel, a renowned human rights advocate, spoke of her own dismay when researching the landmark U.N. study ‘The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children’.

“We came across, eye to eye, women and girls who had been abused by U.N. peacekeeping personnel – it was shocking to us,” Machel said.

Peacekeeping is about more than military peace but also about bringing peace in people themselves, Machel said.

Her sentiments were shared by a panel of international leaders, including Lt. General Roméo Dallaire, Force Commander for the U.N. mission during the Rwandan genocide; Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, former Under-Secretary General; Theo Sowa, CEO of the African Women’s Development Fund; and Paula Donovan Co-director of AIDS-Free World, the organisation spearheading Code Blue.

The panel implored the United Nations and world leaders to act, and called for a truly independent Commission of Inquiry, with unobstructed access to U.N. records and correspondence, and full subpoena power.

Mahel called for the response to cut through the complex technicalities that raised many questions from the media present at the launch.

The problem is truly complex, with different jurisdictions and immunities applying to civilian and military personnel, made more obscure by a lack of transparency and detail in the U.N.’s reporting of cases.

One issue discussed at the forum was Code Blue’s decision to first focus on civilian personnel. The founders of Code Blue argued that this is an important first step to addressing the overall problem.

IPS spoke with Dr Roisin Burke, author of the book ‘Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by U.N. Military Contingents,’ who said that while she agreed that the “jurisdictional vacuum” surrounding civilian personnel needed to be addressed, she also hoped that Code Blue would equally tackle sexual abuse and sexual exploitation by both military and civilian personnel.

“The vast majority of U.N. operations, 70-80 percent of the people who are deployed are military, so you’ve got hundreds of thousands of military personnel deployed across the world,” Burke said.

“Per person, it’s happening more with civilian personnel, the problem is that doesn’t mean that in terms of numbers that it’s happening more.”

The panel also discussed the problems among military personnel, which Code Blue plans to address after first tackling the problem of bureaucratic delays around immunities impairing investigations into civilian personnel.

Lt. General Dallaire also discussed the problems associated with investigating allegations against military personnel who continue to fall under the jurisdiction of their home country.

“Each country will act according to what it thinks is appropriate and more often than not rather than a full-fledged investigation you simply see a plane arriving and a bunch of people being put on a plane and disappearing,” said Dallaire.

“There is far too much centralisation and taking away the ability of those in the field to be able to do the investigation in a timely fashion,” he said.

The panel disagreed with the idea that troop contributing countries will be less likely to send troops if their troops risk prosecution for sexual abuse.

“I come from Bangladesh, the largest troop contributing country. Bangladesh will welcome very much setting the standards high,” Chowdhury said.

Dallaire also agreed that this argument did not hold up and that it was holding the U.N. to ransom.

The first problem Code Blue plans to address though is immunity for civilian personnel. Donovan said that it was often not possible to substantiate allegations against civilian peacekeepers because bureaucracy gets in the way.

“The first step that kicks off the bureaucracy is immunity,” she said.

Immunity is not meant to cover sexual exploitation and abuse because personnel are only covered by immunity during their normal functions as a U.N. staff member. However, Donovan said that there are significant delays because each individual case has to be reviewed by the secretary-general before immunity can be waived. During this time evidence is eroded and witnesses disappear, making a successful investigation almost impossible.

Chowdhury told IPS he believed the U.N. should no longer hide behind legal difficulties and should take the moral high ground in these situations. He added that addressing sexual exploitation and abuse was important if the U.N. was serious about involving more women in peacekeeping operations.

An internal expert report leaked by AIDS-Free World earlier this year said that there is considerable under-reporting of these cases.

Sowa spoke passionately, saying it was heartbreaking this issue had to be discussed, “when the U.N. becomes the protector of predators instead of the prosecutor of predators, that destroys me because I believe in the U.N.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp