Free Republic

Amnesty International is accusing U.N. peacekeepers of indiscriminately killing a 16-year-old boy and his father and raping a 12-year-old girl in separate incidents in Central African Republic, the latest in a series of sexual and other allegations against peacekeepers there. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is “personally dismayed and disappointed,” his spokesman said Tuesday. “We would like to emphasize once more that no misconduct of this nature will be tolerated,” Stephane Dujarric told reporters. The U.N., however, has no powers of criminal investigation or prosecution, leaving it up to peacekeepers’ home countries—which U.N. officials often don’t name publicly. …

The U.N. peacekeepers arrive; months later, some leave infants behind. Now the United Nations has quietly started to offer DNA testing to help prove paternity claims and ensure support for the so-called “peacekeeper babies.” It’s a delicate step, as countries that contribute U.N. troops might not welcome a practice that could prove not only fatherhood but wrongdoing. Of the dozen paternity claims received last year, four were associated with alleged sexual abuse of a minor.The new effort comes a decade after a groundbreaking report on sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers suggested that the U.N. secretary-general be authorized to “require...

R ussia has dismissed Ukraine's calls for UN-mandated peacekeepers to enforce a shaky cease-fire deal in the country's east. Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich said on February 19 that the truce agreement signed in Minsk last week should remain the basis for the conflict's resolution. He also said Kyiv was responsible for making sure the accords were carried out. Ukraine called for peacekeepers to enforce the cease-fire after government troops withdrew from the strategic town of Debaltseve following intense fighting against Russian-backed separatists. President Petro Poroshenko's request was approved by Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council at an emergency meeting...

<p>BERKELEY, Mo. (AP) — A suburban St. Louis police officer shot and killed a man who pointed a gun at him at a gas station late Tuesday, police said.</p> <p>A crowd of about 100 people were gathered early Wednesday at the scene in Berkeley, Missouri, a few miles from Ferguson, where a white police officer fatally shot black 18-year-old Michael Brown in August.</p>

The United Nations said Monday it has withdrawn its peacekeepers from many positions on the Golan Heights because of escalating fighting in the war between Syrian government forces and opposition fighters. U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told The Associated Press that he doesn’t think every single post has been vacated. The U.N. peacekeepers withdrawn Monday have been moved to the Israeli side of the border. …

United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United Nations said that an armed group captured 43 UN peacekeepers on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights on Thursday and that it was doing everything to secure their release. An additional 81 peacekeepers were "currently being restricted to their positions in the vicinity of Ar Ruwayhinah and Burayqah," it added. Israel closed off the area around Quneitra on Wednesday after an officer was wounded by stray fire as Syrian rebels, including fighters from the Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra front, stormed the crossing. No details were released on the nationalities of the detained...

Gaza’s Hamas rulers say they will oppose any international force in a future Palestine—adding a new complication to U.S.-brokered peace efforts. […] Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the Islamic militant group, said Sunday that Hamas will deal with any international force “in the same manner it uses with Israeli occupation forces.” Hamas has killed hundreds of Israelis in years of conflict. …

The idea that peacekeepers should not initiate military action has prevailed ... until now. Jeni Whalan says the new "intervention brigade" in the Congo has stretched the institution of peacekeeping to breaking point. There's a fine, but critical, line between keeping the peace and waging a war.For the blue-helmeted United Nations peacekeepers deployed in some of the world's worst conflict zones, it's a line that is constantly, violently tested - by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the early 1990s; by rebels who this month killed five peacekeepers in South Sudan. Yet the greatest challenge may have come from the...

JUBA (Reuters) - Five U.N. peacekeepers and seven civilians working for the U.N. mission in South Sudan were killed in an ambush by unidentified attackers in the restive eastern state of Jonglei on Tuesday, the United Nations said. "At least nine additional peacekeepers and civilians were injured in the attack and some remain unaccounted for," the U.N. Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said in a statement. India's foreign ministry said the peacekeepers killed were Indian. The nationalities of all the civilians killed were not immediately available, though the United Nations said two of them were South Sudanese and the other...

As negotiations for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan have once again come to a halt, the Taliban Supreme Council has offered to level the playing field by sending a group of 400 battle-hardened Taliban peacekeepers to the U.S. city of Chicago, to help pacify one of the most violent regions in the Great Plains area of the North American continent. With many years of combat experience in violent areas of their own country and having fought rebels, insurgents, villagers, urban militias, rival drug lords, as well as Soviet and American occupying forces on foot, horses, camels, donkeys, and trucks, they...

<p>United Nations peacekeepers in Ivory Coast enticed underage girls in a poor part of the West African nation to exchange sex for food, according to a United States Embassy cable released by WikiLeaks.</p> <p>The cable written in January 2010 focuses on the behavior of Beninese peacekeepers stationed in the western town of Toulepleu, an area that has been at the crosshairs of the nation's 10-year-long conflict.</p>

<p>ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — United Nations peacekeepers in Ivory Coast enticed underage girls in a poor part of the West African nation to exchange sex for food, according to a United States Embassy cable released by WikiLeaks.</p> <p>The cable written in January 2010 focuses on the behavior of Beninese peacekeepers stationed in the western town of Toulepleu, an area that has been at the crosshairs of the nation's 10-year-long conflict.</p>

UNITED NATIONS, July 11 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council Monday unanimously adopted a resolution to withdraw the UN peacekeeping force in Sudan (UNMIS) effective July 11 and complete the withdrawal by August 31, 2011, just two days after South Sudan became the world's newest state. The Security Council "calls upon the secretary-general to complete withdrawal of all uniformed and civilian UNMIS personnel, other than those required for the mission's liquidation, by 31 August 2011," said the resolution. The resolution called on the "need for the orderly withdrawal of UNMIS following the termination of the mission's mandate on July 9,...

MOGADISHU, Somalia -African Union peacekeepers who launched an offensive seven weeks ago have expanded their control of Mogadishu to around half the Somali capital. They've gotten so close to Islamic insurgents that the soldiers can hear them cock their rifles before counterattacks. But the campaign has come at a dear cost. Officials tell The Associated Press that more than 50 peacekeepers have been killed, along with an unknown number of Somali dead. The casualty rate is so high that the AU has not announced it, saying that is the responsibility of Uganda and Burundi, the two countries that currently contribute...

The idea that United Nations or NATO troops be placed in the West Bank and Gaza to keep the peace, stop terrorist attacks, and enforce an Israeli-Palestinian Peace Agreement would be a hysterical joke if the results of such a ridiculous plan would produce such tragic ends. It is not like this half-baked idea has not been tried and proven to be worse than useless because such is the case currently with the UNIFIL troops farcical ineffectiveness at reigning in Hezballah from rebuilding and rearming without even a single reported action impeding their efforts. We saw exactly how effective international...

At least one man has been shot dead in clashes with UN peacekeepers in Haiti. UN troops fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators who were throwing stones and blocking roads in Cap Haitien. The protests come amid a continuing cholera epidemic that has killed more than 900 people, but the UN has also linked them to upcoming elections. UN peacekeepers in Cap Haitien and Hinche were the target of protesters wielding stones and in some cases - the UN says - guns. Some Haitians have accused peacekeepers from Nepal of introducing cholera to Haiti for the first time in a...

Can United Nations peace keeping deliver peace? It sure failed this summer in an eastern province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where armed groups went on a spree of gang rape just 20 miles up the road from a contingent of dozens of UN blue helmets. Despite warnings of trouble, it took three days -- during which the raping of hundreds of women continued -- before a UN patrol showed up. It took more than a week before the head of the UN's Congo peacekeeping mission, US diplomat Roger Meece, says he learned of the rapes. And it...

As the United Nations worked to restore peace and protect women and children in Africa's troubled Cote d'Ivoire three years ago, it announced it was investigating "serious allegations of wide-spread sexual exploitation and abuse." Shockingly, the alleged perpetrators were with the U.N.—Moroccan troops serving as peacekeepers. A confidential probe by U.N. and Moroccan investigators turned up evidence that 14 soldiers were involved, according to a person familiar with the matter; DNA analysis showed some of them had fathered children with the victims. But the U.N. has never disclosed the results of the investigation or whether any of the soldiers were...

AMMAN - Three Jordanian peacekeepers were killed and at least 23 others were injured in the powerful earthquake that struck the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince Tuesday, the Jordan Armed Forces (JAF) announced on Wednesday. The JAF identified the three peacekeepers as Major Ata Issa Hussein Manasir, Major Ashraf Ali Mohammad Jayousi and Corporal Raed Faraj Mefleh Khawaldeh, according to a JAF statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times. In the statement, the JAF paid tribute to the three peacekeepers whom it said were on a humanitarian mission to preserve security and stability in Haiti. Eighteen of the injured are JAF members,...

The community remembers the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit of 1983 as brave troops who suffered great losses in Beirut in one of the most devastating non-nuclear bombings of all time. Retired Marine Col. Timothy Geraghty remembers them as “my men.” Geraghty will be in Jacksonville today to commemorate the anniversary of the bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed nearly 300 peacekeeping troops, 241 of whom were Marines and sailors under his command. Twenty-six years after the event, he has told the story of Beirut in his own words.