Peacekeepers?

Clarice

Who needs peacekeepers as these men? It´s a hell...

By Adam Mynott
BBC News

Twelve-year-old Elizabeth - not her real name - was walking in fields with her brother, following an aunt who had gone ahead to work on the family's plot of land near the town of Man in north-western Ivory Coast, when they were approached by "les casques bleues", as UN peacekeepers are known.
Her brother took a biscuit from one of the men; she refused.

As Elizabeth tried to run away, one of the soldiers seized hold of her. There were 10 of them.

I spoke to Elizabeth near her home. She said: "They grabbed me and threw me to the ground and they forced themselves on me... I tried to escape but there were 10 of them and I could do nothing... I was terrified.

"Then they just left me there bleeding..."

Elizabeth was raped by 10 peacekeepers and abandoned.

Her village elders say they tried to take the case to UN officials at the camp nearby. But Domade Jean-Baptiste, one of the village chiefs, said they were made to wait for ages and then sent away.

Elizabeth's brutal rape is one of an unknown number of sexual assaults carried out by peacekeepers and aid workers, the very people who are brought in to post-conflict areas around the world to protect the vulnerable.

A report by Save the Children UK says such assaults are continuing and, despite an undertaking by the UN and other international bodies to operate a policy of zero tolerance, little appears to be done on the ground to stop the attacks taking place.

The 10 peacekeepers accused of the attack on Elizabeth have returned home.

Save the Children, a leading UK charity, has spent 12 months compiling its report from Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti.

It details cases where children as young as six years old have been preyed on by aid workers and peacekeepers who, in some cases, trade small quantities of food for sex, or rape and sodomise small children with near total impunity.

Save the Children says one of its most harrowing findings is that the abuse is taking place "in acute silence", because of an unwillingness of the authorities to investigate the reported assaults and because in many cases the victims are too frightened or too powerless to take action and report what has happened to them.

Elizabeth, now 13, has been unable to tell her parents about the attack for fear they would throw her out of the house.

She suffers daily pain, nearly a year after the attack, and has abandoned school.

Heather Kerr, country director for Save the Children UK in Ivory Coast, said: "It's a minority of people who are carrying out the abuse but they are using their power to sexually exploit children, and children that don't have the voice to report about this.

"They are suffering in silence."

The United Nations in Ivory Coast has said it welcomes the report and will take note of its findings.

Jean Paul Proulx, the UN Chief Conduct and Discipline Officer, said: "When we have information we take action."

He said investigations often took six months or more to conclude, but they could only be pursued when information was brought forward.

The UN Department of Peace Keeping Operations (DPKO) in New York says that when there is a huge peacekeeping operation around the world, it is not possible to guarantee that abuse does not take place.

Save the Children has urged that stronger measures be taken to prevent the abuse happening.

The charity says better systems need to be in place to allow children to report abuse when it happens, and it is calling for the creation of an international watchdog to translate international concern about child sexual abuse into action that pursues and prosecutes the perpetrators.

Heineken Helen

Sick bastards... taking their positions of power and using it whichever way they want :mad: Also undoing much of the great work the UN peacekeepers actually DO! Why do so many army's allow their soldiers get away with such attrocities?

polaris

because life as a peacekeeper is fucked ... just like war is fucked ... it doesn't excuse their behaviour - but the powers that be need them there to do a job and if a few need to act out to tolerate the stuff - they turn the other cheek ...

Clarice

Heineken Helen wrote:

Sick bastards... taking their positions of power and using it whichever way they want :mad: Also undoing much of the great work the UN peacekeepers actually DO! Why do so many army's allow their soldiers get away with such attrocities?

I agree, Helen, the UN peacekeepers are doing a great work around the world. It´s horror show when you have people like these guys in the middle of them. And the UN can´t answer in this form: "the UN Department of Peace Keeping Operations (DPKO) in New York says that when there is a huge peacekeeping operation around the world, it is not possible to guarantee that abuse does not take place.'.

puremagic

There must be several versions of this story.

http://www.gjsentinel.com/hp/content/shared-gen/ap/Europe/War_Zones_Sex_Abuse.html



"We're not singling out the U.N. In some ways they do a good job. It's all peacekeepers and all aid workers, including Save the Children," that are involved in sexual abuses, he said.

The report says several Save the Children workers were fired for having sex with 17-year-old girls in violation of agency guidelines



Ban promises UN probe of sex abuse by peacekeepers
By EDITH LEDERER
Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said Tuesday the United Nations will investigate allegations by a leading children's charity that U.N. peacekeepers are involved in widespread sexual abuse of children.

The report by Save the Children UK, based on field research in southern Sudan, Ivory Coast and Haiti, describes a litany of sexual crimes committed by peacekeepers and international relief workers against children as young as 6.

It said some children were denied food aid unless they granted sexual favors; others were forced to have sex or to take part in child pornography; many more were subjected to improper touching or kissing.

"The report shows sexual abuse has been widely underreported because children are afraid to come forward," Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children UK, told Associated Press Television News.

"A tiny proportion of peacekeepers and aid workers are abusing the children they were sent to protect. It ranges from sex for food to coerced sex. It's despicable."

Calling the sexual exploitation of minors a "very serious issue," Ban reiterated to reporters that he has a "zero tolerance" policy for such acts by U.N. personnel.

"I think that the report is very valuable and does give us some good points to which the United Nations should continue to address this issue," Ban said. "On all these cases which have been raised, we will very carefully investigate" and will take "necessary measures" where appropriate.

Earlier, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas had welcomed the report. "It's fair, and I think it's essentially accurate," she said.

Montas noted the report states the United Nations has already undertaken steps designed to tackle the problem, from establishing conduct and discipline units in all U.N. missions to strengthening training for all categories of U.N. personnel. She said the United Nations also needs to strengthen its investigative capacity.

The study was based on research, confidential interviews and focus groups conducted last year. The charity emphasized it did not produce comprehensive statistics about the scale of abuse but did gather enough information to indicate the problem is severe.

The report said that more than half the children interviewed knew of cases of sexual abuse and that in many instances children knew of 10 or more such incidents carried out by aid workers or peacekeepers.

The Save the Children UK researchers, who met with 129 girls and 121 boys between the ages of 10 and 17, and also with a number of adults, found an "overwhelming" majority of the people interviewed would never report a case of abuse and had never heard of a case being reported.

The threat of retaliation, and the stigma attached to sex abuse, were powerful deterrents to coming forward, the report said.

Ann Buchanan, an Oxford University expert in statistical attempts to quantify rates of child abuse, said the topic is so taboo it is virtually impossible to come up with reliable numbers. But she said the new report provides a useful starting point.

"This will never be a statistical study," she said. "We'd call it a pilot work exploring the start of an issue. All the research shows kids don't make it up."

Buchanan, who directs the Oxford Center for Research into Parenting and Children, said the biggest obstacle to accurate numerical studies of child sexual abuse is the reluctance of children to come forward and tell adults they have been taken advantage of.

"Sexual abuse is a hugely difficult, sensitive area and it's not something that you can usually do surveys about because kids feel terrible shame and are afraid to say what's happened to them," she said. "Given what we know about underreporting of sex abuse, I would say this report is probably true. They've gone about it as sensitively as you can."

Save the Children spokesman Dominic Nutt said U.N. peacekeepers are involved in many abuse cases because they are present throughout the world in such large numbers. But he praised the United Nations for improving its reporting and investigative procedures regarding sex abuse.

"We're not singling out the U.N. In some ways they do a good job. It's all peacekeepers and all aid workers, including Save the Children," that are involved in sexual abuses, he said.

The report says several Save the Children workers were fired for having sex with 17-year-old girls in violation of agency guidelines.

In its report, Save the Children UK makes three key recommendations: establish a way for people to report abuse locally, create an international watchdog agency this year to deal with the problem, and set up a program to deal with the underlying causes of child abuse.

Tom Cargill, Africa program manager at the London think tank Chatham House, said there is no "magic bullet" that can solve the problem quickly.

"The governance of U.N. missions has always been a problem because soldiers from individual states are only beholden to those states," he said. "So it's difficult for the U.N. to pursue charges and difficult for the U.N. to investigate them."

___

Associated Press writer Gregory Katz in London contributed to this report.

Clarice

puremagic wrote:

There must be several versions of this story.

http://www.gjsentinel.com/hp/content/shared-gen/ap/Europe/War_Zones_Sex_Abuse.html



"We're not singling out the U.N. In some ways they do a good job. It's all peacekeepers and all aid workers, including Save the Children," that are involved in sexual abuses, he said.

The report says several Save the Children workers were fired for having sex with 17-year-old girls in violation of agency guidelines



Ban promises UN probe of sex abuse by peacekeepers
By EDITH LEDERER
Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said Tuesday the United Nations will investigate allegations by a leading children's charity that U.N. peacekeepers are involved in widespread sexual abuse of children.

The report by Save the Children UK, based on field research in southern Sudan, Ivory Coast and Haiti, describes a litany of sexual crimes committed by peacekeepers and international relief workers against children as young as 6.

It said some children were denied food aid unless they granted sexual favors; others were forced to have sex or to take part in child pornography; many more were subjected to improper touching or kissing.

"The report shows sexual abuse has been widely underreported because children are afraid to come forward," Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children UK, told Associated Press Television News.

"A tiny proportion of peacekeepers and aid workers are abusing the children they were sent to protect. It ranges from sex for food to coerced sex. It's despicable."

Calling the sexual exploitation of minors a "very serious issue," Ban reiterated to reporters that he has a "zero tolerance" policy for such acts by U.N. personnel.

"I think that the report is very valuable and does give us some good points to which the United Nations should continue to address this issue," Ban said. "On all these cases which have been raised, we will very carefully investigate" and will take "necessary measures" where appropriate.

Earlier, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas had welcomed the report. "It's fair, and I think it's essentially accurate," she said.

Montas noted the report states the United Nations has already undertaken steps designed to tackle the problem, from establishing conduct and discipline units in all U.N. missions to strengthening training for all categories of U.N. personnel. She said the United Nations also needs to strengthen its investigative capacity.

The study was based on research, confidential interviews and focus groups conducted last year. The charity emphasized it did not produce comprehensive statistics about the scale of abuse but did gather enough information to indicate the problem is severe.

The report said that more than half the children interviewed knew of cases of sexual abuse and that in many instances children knew of 10 or more such incidents carried out by aid workers or peacekeepers.

The Save the Children UK researchers, who met with 129 girls and 121 boys between the ages of 10 and 17, and also with a number of adults, found an "overwhelming" majority of the people interviewed would never report a case of abuse and had never heard of a case being reported.

The threat of retaliation, and the stigma attached to sex abuse, were powerful deterrents to coming forward, the report said.

Ann Buchanan, an Oxford University expert in statistical attempts to quantify rates of child abuse, said the topic is so taboo it is virtually impossible to come up with reliable numbers. But she said the new report provides a useful starting point.

"This will never be a statistical study," she said. "We'd call it a pilot work exploring the start of an issue. All the research shows kids don't make it up."

Buchanan, who directs the Oxford Center for Research into Parenting and Children, said the biggest obstacle to accurate numerical studies of child sexual abuse is the reluctance of children to come forward and tell adults they have been taken advantage of.

"Sexual abuse is a hugely difficult, sensitive area and it's not something that you can usually do surveys about because kids feel terrible shame and are afraid to say what's happened to them," she said. "Given what we know about underreporting of sex abuse, I would say this report is probably true. They've gone about it as sensitively as you can."

Save the Children spokesman Dominic Nutt said U.N. peacekeepers are involved in many abuse cases because they are present throughout the world in such large numbers. But he praised the United Nations for improving its reporting and investigative procedures regarding sex abuse.

"We're not singling out the U.N. In some ways they do a good job. It's all peacekeepers and all aid workers, including Save the Children," that are involved in sexual abuses, he said.

The report says several Save the Children workers were fired for having sex with 17-year-old girls in violation of agency guidelines.

In its report, Save the Children UK makes three key recommendations: establish a way for people to report abuse locally, create an international watchdog agency this year to deal with the problem, and set up a program to deal with the underlying causes of child abuse.

Tom Cargill, Africa program manager at the London think tank Chatham House, said there is no "magic bullet" that can solve the problem quickly.

"The governance of U.N. missions has always been a problem because soldiers from individual states are only beholden to those states," he said. "So it's difficult for the U.N. to pursue charges and difficult for the U.N. to investigate them."

___

Associated Press writer Gregory Katz in London contributed to this report.

It´s horrible..these children lives in a hell, as a lot of the other kids around the world, suffering abuses in their own home.. but you need severe investigation and to make this of transparent form for avoid, for example, the mistakes and inaction of church Christian about this.

Heineken Helen

Clara Clareando wrote:

It´s horrible..these children lives in a hell, as a lot of the other kids around the world, suffering abuses in their own home.. but you need severe investigation and to make this of transparent form for avoid, for example, the mistakes and inaction of church Christian about this.

exactly, there should be no excuses and no let off's for what soldiers do during war or peacekeeping. They, especially peacekeepers are fighting to convince that their side is right... how can the locals (who they have to convince) realise their way is right if individuals are doing things like this? It completely fucks up the mission.