If you aren't informed about this stuff, you will be made sick. If you are informed, you will be made mad, all over again.
Posted on 02/15/2005 8:13:56 PM PST by quidnunc
Living in the shadow of the Oil-for-Food controversy is another major United Nations scandal that may cause untold damage to the world body’s already declining reputation. U.N. peacekeepers and civilian officials from the U.N. Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo stand accused of major human rights violations. At least 150 allegations have been made against the Mission’s personnel. [1] The allegations involve rape and forced prostitution of women and young girls across the country, including inside a refugee camp in the town of Bunia, in northeastern Congo. The victims are defenseless refugees, many of them children, who have already been brutalized and terrorized by years of war and who looked to the U.N. for safety and protection. The U.S. Congress should act to ensure that the U.N. personnel involved are brought to justice and that such barbaric abuses are never repeated.
The United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) employs about 11,500 peacekeepers from 15 countries, in addition to 650 civilian staff. The biggest peacekeeping contingents are from Uruguay, (1,778 soldiers), Pakistan (1,700), South Africa (1,387), Bangladesh (1,304), India (1,302), Nepal (1,225), and Morocco (801). [2] Established in 1999, MONUC is currently authorized by Security Council Resolution 1493. [3]
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has acknowledged that “acts of gross misconduct have taken place.” [4] A draft United Nations report has described sexual exploitation by U.N. personnel in the Congo as “significant, widespread and ongoing.” [5] In the words of William Lacy Swing, Annan’s special representative to the Congo, “We are shocked by it, we’re outraged, we’re sickened by it. Peacekeepers who have been sworn to assist those in need, particularly those who have been victims of sexual violence, instead have caused grievous harm.” [6]
This scandal raises serious questions about U.N. oversight of its peacekeeping operations and the culture of secrecy and lack of accountability that pervade the U.N. system. The fact that abuses of this scale are taking place under U.N. supervision is astonishing, and it is inconceivable that officials in New York were unaware of the magnitude of the problem at an early stage.
There are major doubts surrounding the effectiveness of the U.N.’s own internal investigation into the Congo scandal, conducted by the Office of Internal Oversight Services, headed by Under Secretary General Dileep Nair. [7] A confidential U.N. report obtained by The Washington Post revealed that “U.N. peacekeepers threatened U.N. investigators investigating allegations of sexual misconduct in Congo and sought to bribe witnesses to change incriminating testimony.” [8] According to the Post, the report also cites instances where peacekeepers from Morocco, Pakistan, and possibly Tunisia “were reported to have paid, or attempted to pay witnesses to change their testimony.”
The Congo abuse scandal is the latest in a string of scandals that have hit U.N. peacekeeping operations across the world. Indeed, it appears that U.N. peacekeeping missions may give rise to a predatory sexual culture, with refugees the victims of UN staff who demand sexual favors in exchange for food and U.N. troops who rape women at gunpoint. Allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct by U.N. personnel stretch back at least a decade, to operations in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. Despite previous U.N. investigations, and Kofi Annan’s declaration of a policy of “zero tolerance” toward such conduct, little appears to have changed in the field. [9]
-snip-
How many investigations do we have to conduct? What is our strategic interest? Why don't we just expel the UN and leave it go? Why do John Kerry and Howard Dean keep saying things we don't want to hear? Why is the sky blue?
I'm waiting to read this in the "paper of record," The New York Times.
Biggest story of the past 50 years, and they have virtually ignored it.
Oh, and how about CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, et al.? Aren't they concerned about mass rape of African children? Or mass starvation of Iraqi children? Or sex trade of minors in occupied Yugoslavia?
I guess not.
Only if they can blame Bush or Israel.
Morocco arrests 6 soldiers for sex abuse in Congo
Sun February 13, 2005 4:30 PM GMT+02:00
RABAT (Reuters) - Six Moroccan soldiers serving as U.N. peacekeepers in Congo have been arrested for sexually abusing young girls, the government said on Sunday.
It also said the head of the Moroccan military contingent in Congo and his deputy have been relieved of their duties.
Over the past year the United Nations has probed 150 allegations against some 50 soldiers of various nationalities of sexual exploitation of women and girls, including of being involved in gang rapes.
The six soldiers were involved in two separate cases and the U.N informed Morocco of them on 2 May, 2004, and 14 January, 2005. The Moroccan government said in a statement published in the official media that the soldiers "have been put under arrest and will be tried".
The North African kingdom has about 800 men in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the U.N. peacekeeping force of more than 13,000 known by its French acronym MONUC.
The only known prosecution against troops until Morocco's announcement had been by South Africa against two of its soldiers. France jailed a U.N. staffer on charges of rape and making pornographic videos of children. Allegations have also been made against soldiers from Nepal, Tunisia and Uruguay.
The U.N. last week banned peacekeepers from having sex with Congolese as part of a new "non-fraternization policy".
Children as young as 12 or 13 have been bribed with eggs, milk or a few dollars for sex, according to U.N. reports on the widespread abuses.
http://www.reuters.co.za/locales/c_newsArticle.jsp?type=topNews&localeKey=en_ZA&storyID=7611715
This scandal raises serious questions about U.N. oversight of its peacekeeping operations and the culture of secrecy and lack of accountability that pervade the U.N. system.
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Yes, how many times do we have to demonstrate WHAT THE U.N. IS AND IS NOT, and trashy they are? How long does our contry continue to lower itself by letting these crooks and schemers to operate from OUR SHORES??? Throw these maggots out, for good!!!
we need an exit strategy to leave the UN!!
If you aren't informed about this stuff, you will be made sick. If you are informed, you will be made mad, all over again.
ABC News has been covering it.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/UnitedNations/story?id=489306&page=1
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