ISSUE 41: MARCH-MAY 2006

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COMMENT

Action must be taken against peacekeeper sexual predators

By Ramesh Thakur

The rise and diffusion of human rights norms and conventions were among the great achievements of the last century. The United Nations was at the center of that effort. Its leadership on human rights has helped to change the public policy discourse in all parts of the world. As a universal organization, it provides a unique institutional framework to develop and promote human rights norms and practices and to advance legal, monitoring and operational instruments to uphold the universality of human rights while respecting national and cultural diversity.

The revolution in human rights rests on a partnership between the intergovernmental and nongovernmental actors with regard to standard setting, rule creation, monitoring and compliance. If the United Nations is to maintain its human rights credibility, soldiers committing abuses in its name must face investigation and prosecution by effective international machinery. Over a decade ago Amnesty International argued that the time was overdue for the United Nations to build measures for human rights promotion and protection into its own peacekeeping activities. Among other things blue-helmeted troops were alleged to have patronized brothels containing captive Croat and  Muslim women in Bosnia and paid for sex with children in Mozambique.

In what has been described as a kiss-and-tell book, three U.N. staffers – Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson – write of allegations like Bulgaria recruiting prisoners to fill their quota for peacekeepers to be sent to the U.N. mission in Cambodia, who drank too much, raped Cambodian women and crashed their landcruisers with remarkable regularity; and U.N. peacekeepers being more concerned to save their own lives than to protect their wards. Equally, though, the book is an account of the alienation and sense of betrayal felt by many idealistic recruits who are disillusioned by the realities of power, politics, greed and bureaucracy surrounding the machinery of international organization in the midst of many long-running conflicts and their deeply traumatized victims. 

The U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services conducted a probe of 72 allegations of sexual abuse in Bunia (eastern Congo) in 2004. They fully substantiated abuses of underage girls in six cases, where U.N. peacekeepers procured girls aged 12-14 for sex in return for 2 to 3 dollars or its equivalent in food. There have also been cases of rape.

Many of the allegations are difficult to prove in a court of law. Worse, the United Nations has no power to try the offending soldiers, who are subject to the disciplinary authority of their own military. The South African government decided to take action against two of its soldiers, and a French civilian with pornographic pictures and video of his victims was arrested in Paris pending prosecution. There were even suggestions that the existence of photographs could potentially mark this as the United Nations' own Abu Ghraib. 

But the abuses are not confined to U.N. peacekeepers. Amnesty concluded that "the international community" (that is, peacekeepers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as well as U.N. civilian personnel) made up about 80 percent of the clientele of women trafficked into prostitution in Kosovo. 

In his package of reform proposals last year, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan admitted to being "especially troubled by instances in which United Nations peacekeepers are alleged to have sexually exploited minors and other vulnerable people, repeated his policy of zero tolerance of such offences, and reaffirmed the United Nations' commitment "to respect, adhere to and implement international law, fundamental human rights and the basic standards of due process." Annan appointed Prince Zeid al-Hussein, Jordan's ambassador to the United Nations with personal civilian peacekeeping experience in Bosnia, to study the abuses and make recommendations on improving the accountability of U.N. peacekeeping missions.

Prince Zeid's report, submitted in March 2005, concluded that sexual exploitation of women and girls by U.N. security and civilian personnel in Congo was significant, widespread and ongoing. His recommendations included withholding the salary of guilty peacekeepers and putting the money in a fund to care for their victims, requiring troop-contributing countries to prosecute perpetrators identified by U.N. investigative teams, and making soldiers financially liable for "peacekeeper babies" they have fathered as determined by DNA testing. Annan concurred with the analysis and recommendations with respect to the investigative processes; the organizational, managerial and command responsibility; and individual disciplinary, financial and criminal accountability. 

Despite the problem of peacekeepers as sexual predators being known at least since the Namibia and Cambodia operations in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the necessary action does not seem to have been taken to catch and end the abuses. In updating the Security Council on Feb. 23, Prince Zeid said that three to four years may be required for the reform program to take hold. In the meantime, charges of sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers remain unacceptably high. 

Undersecretary General Jean-Marie Guehenno informed the Security Council that on the basis of investigations against 295 peacekeeping personnel, 170 individuals (137 soldiers, 16 policemen and 17 civilians) had been sent home or dismissed. 

Interestingly, in a U.N. report commissioned from DeLoitte Consulting, U.N. staff reported that the infrastructure to support ethics and integrity is already in place but accountability is not. The General Assembly has voted for the establishment of a new ethics office to be located directly in the secretary general's office. Another major lesson has to be the importance of educating and training U.N. peacekeepers – soldiers, police and civilian officials – in international humanitarian and human rights laws, with a particular focus on gender protection laws and norms.

Ramesh Thakur is senior vice rector of UN University and author of The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge University Press). This commentary was first published in The Daily Yomiuri on March 6. These are his personal views.

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