Free Republic

<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, A report on sexual abuse by peacekeepers recommended Thursday that offending soldiers and their commanders be punished by their home countries, that payments made to them be recovered and put into a fund for victims and that the United Nations make compliance with these measures a condition for taking part in its missions. Secretary General Kofi Annan commissioned the report from Prince Zeid Raad al Hussein, Jordan's ambassador to the United Nations, after evidence emerged that blue helmeted peacekeepers and civilian staff members had had sex with women and girls in Congo in exchange for food and money,...

Recently the Times of London did an article on the sex-for-food scandal involving UN staff and peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In what the newspaper referred to as "the United Nation’s Abu Ghraib", the Times reported about acts of rape committed by UN personnel on women and children in the African country, and the fact that some of those acts against women and children were filmed. Tapes of those crimes are now being sold around the Congo. The Times report said that investigations have revealed 150 allegations of sexual misconduct by UN employees and peacekeepers. Some of the...

The Left's dogmatic insistence that the answer to all of America's foreign policy questions lie within the hallowed halls of the United Nations continues to bewilder the clear-thinking. The persistent belief that the UN is somehow the world's "moral compass" is due more to hopes and dreams than fact and reason. The UN's record of incompetence and corruption is truly mind-boggling, and it seems to grow every day. The most well-known moral failure of the UN in recent memory took place in Rwanda, in 1994. UN peacekeeping troops did nothing to prevent Rwandans from being slaughtered in a spasm of...