Posted on 05/11/2004 7:21:49 AM PDT by Pikamax
UN Probes Reports of Sexual Abuse by Congo Staff Mon May 10, 2004 04:06 PM ET
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By David Lewis KINSHASA (Reuters) - The United Nations mission in Congo said Monday it was investigating allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation of civilians, including minors, by its staff serving in the northeastern town of Bunia.
About half of the U.N. 10,800-member peacekeeping force -- known by its French acronym MONUC -- and about 60 civilian staff are based in and around Bunia, the capital of the troubled Ituri province.
"Faced with some information regarding some cases of reported abuses, we have launched an internal investigation," said Leocadio Salmeron, a U.N. spokesman said by phone from Bunia.
Salmeron refused to give details of the abuses or the number of people being investigated. But he said that it was a question of "a few incidents that have emerged recently among a small group of people, rather than wide-scale abuses."
"We have taken the necessary measures to stop the situation from getting out of control in an environment where we have lots of military and civilian personnel working with the local population," he said, adding the investigations were nearly complete.
However, another U.N. source speaking on condition of anonymity said the reports on the alleged abuses referred to "more than just a few cases" and involved both U.N. civilian and military staff, some of them quite senior.
"MONUC is committed to completing a full and thorough investigation as a matter of urgency, and to applying all available sanctions against any of its personnel found responsible," U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said in a statement from New York published on the MONUC Web site.
The peacekeepers are in Ituri to restore peace in a region where fighting between ethnic militias has killed 50,000 people since 1999 -- part of Congo's wider five-year conflict, which was officially declared over last year.
About 3 million people were killed during the war, mostly through disease and starvation. Many people were raped or sexually abused.
Two years ago, the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, was mired in a scandal when a report it had commissioned found that scores of refugee children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had been subjected to sexual abuses in exchange for humanitarian aid.
U.N. investigators said later they had been unable to substantiate the report's allegations of widespread abuse but concluded exploitation was a serious concern in refugee camps and issued recommendations to crack down on the problem.
"The mission is determined to enforce Secretary-General Kofi Annan's policy of zero tolerance of any sexual misconduct," Eckhard said in the statement.
FMCDH
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