un: sex-for-food
This should make any sane person absolutely sick and angry: U.N. sex crimes in Congo; prostitution, rape run rampant (ABC News).
NEW YORK, Feb. 10, 2005 — Widespread allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse of Congolese women, boys and girls have been made against U.N. personnel who were sent to help and protect them — despite a so-called zero tolerance policy touted by the United Nations toward such behavior.
The range of sexual abuse includes reported rapes of young Congolese girls by U.N. troops; an Internet pedophile ring run from Congo by Didier Bourguet, a senior U.N. official from France; a colonel from South Africa accused of molesting his teenage male translators; and estimates of hundreds of underage girls having babies fathered by U.N. soldiers who have been able to simply leave their children and their crimes behind.
Ravaged by decades of civil war, and one of the poorest countries in the world, Congo has relied on the United Nations for both military protection and humanitarian aid.
“The U.N. is there for their protection, so when the protectors become violators, this is particularly egregious,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch who investigated the allegations on behalf of her organization. “This is particularly bad.”
William Swing, a former U.S. ambassador to Congo who now heads the U.N. peacekeeping mission there, admitted the sexual crimes were a black mark on the United Nations.
“It pains us all,” he said. “It’s absolutely odious. And we’re determined to wipe it out.”
But Swing said the problem was just recently brought to his attention, and that only a small percentage of the 11,000 U.N. personnel in Congo were involved.
“A few people have managed to basically cause disgrace for the mission and for the U.N., and that’s why we’re determined to conquer it. I have sent a dozen home,” Swing said. But human rights investigators have reported a far wider, even systemic problem, recording more than 150 allegations against U.N. employees in Congo.
And there is what human rights investigators have called “survival sex.”
“We have heard cases where they have traded eggs for sex or bread for sex or a jar of peanut butter for sex,” said Van Woudenberg. “These are not people who have very much. So they hang around the outskirts of these U.N. bases in order to try and get a handout, a little food. Maybe they can sell some bananas or some peanuts. And it has become not uncommon that peacekeepers invite these girls in — and of course the younger the better, because there’s less chance that they will be infected by HIV/AIDS.”
The United Nations has documented cases where this has happened to girls as young as 11, according to Van Woudenberg.
Breaking Curfew
Paying for sex, with food or cash, is strictly prohibited by U.N. rules. And even being in a place where prostitutes are available is supposedly prohibited by the U.N. Code of Conduct.
The United Nations said its crackdown on sex crimes includes a tough dusk-to-dawn curfew for U.N. personnel soldiers and a midnight deadline for civilian employees.
But at Café Doga, in the eastern town of Bunia, ABC News cameras caught a group of U.N. peacekeepers well after the curfew, partaking in drinks, dancing at a bar filled with prostitutes, and later loading several of the prostitutes into U.N. vehicles and driving away.
Swing said he had been unaware of such U.N. fraternization with prostitutes. “Well, perhaps my senior management there wasn’t aware of it, and I will find out right away,” he said. And when it was pointed out that several of the senior management were in fact leaving at the same time U.N. personnel left with the prostitutes, Swing responded, “I will look into it. It’s not yet where we want to be but we will get there, I promise you.”
U.N. peacekeeping troops first came to Congo five years ago to stop a raging border war, and the first reports of sex crimes began within a year of their arrival.
Men from roughly 50 different countries make up the U.N. forces in Congo, and the United Nations does not conduct background checks. Furthermore, U.N. troops are exempt from prosecution in Congo.
Go and read the rest, if you can stand it. You’ll read about, among many other things, a French UN official who kept pictures of himself and the hundreds of Congolese girls he had sex with, some of whom were as young as 13.
I’ll be following this as closely as I can. Between the BBC, AP, Reuters, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, a check of the news feeds turned up exactly one reference to any sex crimes by UN officials in Congo. Kudos to ABC for sticking with it, and here’s hoping they keep at it.
[inherited from: Merde in France.]
UPDATE [23:05]: Legacy media may not be talking about it, but bloggers Joe Gandelman and Michelle Malkin are. So are Q and O, Ace of Spades, and Powerline. Astonishingly, there is an entry on this on the blog mostly AFRICA — from 2003.
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