Accusations that UN personnel in Southern Sudan have been involved in the raping and abusing of young children have been published this week in the Daily Telegraph.
The paper has gathered 20 accounts from victims claiming that children displaced by the civil war and sleeping rough on the streets of the capital, have been targeted by UN peacekeeping and civilian staff who pick them up in UN vehicles and force them to have sex.
Despite verbal testimony given by children, the British regional coordinator James Ellery has refuted all allegations, citing a lack of evidence and blaming the accusations on 'misunderstandings' and the local peoples illiteracy. He referred to the allegations as 'rumors'. An internal UNICEF report for the Sudanese government and a report from an unnamed NGO both appeared to substantiate the claims, but as yet, no cases have come to court.
The story follows a spate of similar allegations that have emerged in recent years. A BBC investigation in November 2006 detailed numerous allegations of rape and prostitution connected to UN forces in Haiti and Liberia. The report highlighted the fact the UN appeared both disinterested and ineffective in responding to allegations of the rape and sexual abuse of young women and children and was unable or unwilling to police the widespread use of prostitutes by it's personnel in the region.
A spate of stories emerged from the UN presence in Congo when in October 2005, both ABC and Fox news reported the story of Didier Bourget, a senior UN official from France, who videotaped himself having sex with young Congolese girls and was said to be running an internet pedophile ring in the region. Police investigating Bourget stated that his bedroom was covered with mirrors and he had set up a a series of remote controlled cameras around the room. The sting operation that captured him, allegedly found him preparing to rape a 12-year-old girl.
Following this, a further ABC News investigation published details of Aimme Tsesi, a 15 year old deaf-mute Congolese girl raped and impregnated by a Uruguayan UN solider, who was turned away from the gates of the UN camp when she went there for assistance. These cases were amongst an estimated 150 allegations of sexual exploitation and rape in the region that were highlighted in the ABC program "20/20" which aired in February 2005.
A Times investigation in December 2004, turned up allegations that two Russian pilots based in Mbandaka, paid young girls with jars of mayonnaise and jam to have sex with them. They filmed the sex acts and then apparently sent the tapes to Russia. The men were tipped off when the story was about to become public and left the area, escaping prosecution.
In 2001 former U.N. human rights investigator Kathryn Bolkovac sued the defense contractor DynCorp, (who administered the contract to provide police officers for the 2,100-member UN international police task force) on charges of wrongful dismissal, sexual discrimination and violation of Britain's whistle-blower laws. Bolkovac stated that the company dismissed her because she reported in an email that Dyncorp police trainers officers were availing themselves of services offered by young women forced into prostitution and were complicit in sexual trafficking.
The email alleged that U.N. officers visited Bosnian sex clubs where girls as young as 15 were beaten, raped, refused food, and locked away for days or weeks if they refused to dance naked on tables and consort with paying customers. She stated that the women were told they would be arrested by the local police if they tried to contact them for help. She also said that officials were involved in helping local police to sell women into the sex-trade.
The British tribunal found unanimously in favor of Bolkovac and stated that Michael Stiers, the deputy commissioner of the mission in Bosnia who dismissed Bolkovac, for allegedly falsifying her time-sheet, "had his knife in her and was determined that she should be removed from her role as a gender monitor with IPTF." Despite this decision and the fact the many Dyncorp official resigned under a cloud of suspicion, they enjoyed immunity from prosecution in Bosnia and were therefore never charged.
A similar lawsuit occurred earlier in 2001 when a former DynCorp aircraft mechanic Ben Johnston went public with allegations that during 1999 senior Dyncorp employees were "engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior." Amongst the many allegations were those of middle-aged men having sex with 12 year-olds, involvement with the Serbian Mafia, a DynCorp supervisor videotaping himself having sex with two females despite the fact that one of the women on the video was repeatedly heard saying "no" and the charge that many DynCorp employees bragged about purchasing women from Russia, Romania and other places for use as sex-slaves in Bosnia, and then sold them before returning home.
Comment
There is a sense in which the United Nation's efforts to stem a tide of corrupt practice and moral degeneracy by it's troops and employees is at best negligent and at worst makes it appear criminally complicit in the actions it says it is trying to prevent.
Spokesmen for the UN continue to mouth a combination of platitudes and excuses, denying knowledge, citing insignificant evidence, or else attempting to shift the blame for actions committed by UN forces onto other groups and peoples.
Perhaps it is not surprising though, that an organization which spends such a great deal of time and energy telling other people how they ought to live and portraying itself as a beacon of light and freedom to poor and oppressed people everywhere, should be found at heart to be capable of both high level political corruption and a degree of moral bankruptcy that if maintained, will only lead to it losing further credibility. But then again, perhaps that's the whole point...
