Another one of those articles highlighting how UN "peacekeepers" took advantage of vulnerable people in vulnerable situations. Regardless of who stoops so low in the society, helping someone to gain sexual favours is always wrong. However, if this would've been done by non-UN & some groups in Middle East or Africa, not only that group of people is maligned but the whole religion is dragged through the mud & dirt. But when UN "peacekeepers" do the same thing, it's a back-page news (assuming it's considered news at all in the first place). Western hypocrisy at its peak !!!
When the 2011 movie, "The Whistleblower," showed how UN "peacekeepers" sexually abused girls in war-torn Bosnia, & how UN tried to cover up the whole scandal, the world didn't demand answers from UN for what it has done wrong. UN "peacekeepers" realizing that their actions carry no adverse consequences for themselves or for UN, carried on, business as usual. Now, although, the allegations of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers have spread out from Cambodia to Central African Republic to Haiti; thanks to Western media, UN & the world public still won't take any substantive corrective measures & punish those who did wrong.
Well, UN "peacekeepers" will keep doing what they do best; sexually abusing women, girls, & boys in countries where they are sent to serve & protect the vulnerable general public. Doesn't it seem like that UN is starting to become better in hiding scandals nowadays than to actually prevent wars & chaos in the world?
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According to a new UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) report obtained by the news agency, a third of alleged sexual exploitation & abuse involved minors under 18.
The shocking conclusions were revealed after investigators interviewed 231 people in Haiti who claimed they were forced to perform sexual acts with UN peacekeepers in exchange for basic necessities.
“For rural women, hunger, lack of shelter, baby care items, medication & household items were frequently cited as the 'triggering need,'" the report says. Those living in the city or in its vicinity had sex in exchange for “church shoes, cell phones, laptops & perfume, as well as money,” report says.
“In cases of non-payment, some women withheld the badges of peacekeepers & threatened to reveal their infidelity via social media,” the report says.
The UN explicitly bans the “exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex,” & discourages relationships between UN staff & those who are under their care. However, only 7 of the interviewed victims “knew about the United Nations policy prohibiting sexual exploitation & abuse,” the report states.
The report ... makes no reference to the time frame of the alleged violations, but the 7,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti started in 2004. The investigation also does not mention the number of peacekeepers involved.
The report says that the lack of any clear action is “demonstrating significant underreporting,” while noting that assistance to those that suffered is “severely deficient.” The average investigation by OIOS takes more than a year, according to AP.
Sexual abuse by peacekeeping troops, some 125,000 of which are currently deployed around the world, has undermined the credibility of their missions. A rapid increase in prostitution & abuse in Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Sudan & Kosovo were documented after UN peacekeeping forces moved in.
Earlier this year it was revealed that UN peacekeepers raped & sodomized starving & homeless boys in the Central African Republic, some as young as 9.
However, the number of documented cases of sexual abuse & exploitation by members of UN peacekeeping missions was 51 in 2014, down from 66 the year before, according to the secretary-general's latest annual report on the issue.
This news wasn't surprising at all for me. After watching the 2011 movie, "The Whistleblower," such horrible acts of soldiers working for UN are not a surprise. Heck, even UN's own actions after discovering what French soldiers were doing in Central African Republic are no different than what was portrayed in the movie; bury the evidence, deny any wrongdoing & punish the whistleblower.
Ironically, the world media brings down the house, if & when, these kinds of things are done by so-called "Muslim" groups. Then, the reactions of general public are such that Islam allows these things to happen or Muslims love doing these.
Well, what was driving French soldiers to rape & sodomize small African kids? What was their religion ordering them to do (if they believed in an organized religion / faith)?
Why the general public of "fair" & "just" developed, Western world has such double standards that if a so-called Islamist group performs these acts, then "it's hang-man time" for the whole religion & members of that group but if the same horrible acts are done by their own soldiers, then "it must be a mistake" & "it's all good."
What ISIS do with Yazidi girls / women (I am not condoning those acts ... just putting them in perspectives) is still much less in scope & effect than what soldiers do, under the auspices of UN, in foreign countries from Cambodia to Thailand to Bosnia to Somalia to Central African Republic. At least ISIS doesn't hide what they are doing, unlike UN, which always tries to brush these problems in its rank & file under the proverbial carpet.
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A damning UN report about how French soldiers raped & sodomized starving & homeless boys in the Central African Republic, some as young as 9, has been leaked to the Guardian, & the UN official who blew the whistle is facing dismissal.
French peacekeeping troops were supposed to be protecting children at a center for internally displaced people at M’Poko Airport in CAR’s capital Bangui, when the abuse reportedly took place between December 2013 & June 2014. It was at a time when the UN’s mission at the country, MINUSCA, was in the process of being set up.
An internal investigation was ordered by the UN office of the high commissioner for human rights (UNHCR), after reports on the ground of sexual abuse of children displaced by the conflict.
A member of staff from the high commissioner of human rights & a specialist from UNICEF interviewed the children between May & June last year. Some of the boys were able to give good descriptions of individual soldiers who abused them.
Officials in Geneva reportedly received the report in summer 2014.
Swedish national, Anders Kompass, a senior UN aid worker who has been involved in humanitarian work for over 30 years, passed the document on to French prosecutors because of the UN’s failure to take action, sources close to the case told the Guardian.
The newspaper reports that after receiving the confidential UN report entitled Sexual Abuse on Children by International Armed Forces, French authorities traveled to Bangui to investigate the allegations.
A French judicial source said that the prosecutor’s office had received the UN report in July 2014 & that a preliminary investigation had been launched.
“A preliminary investigation has been opened by the Paris prosecutor since July 21, 2014. The investigation is ongoing,” he said, as quoted by Reuters.
The UN also confirmed Monday that it had given an unredacted report to the French authorities on the alleged abuse of children by French soldiers in CAR.
“The unedited version was, by a staff member's own admission, provided unofficially by that staff member to the French authorities in late July, prior to even providing it to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights' (OHCHR) senior management,” the spokesman for the UN Secretary-General said in a statement.
The report made its way to Paula Donovan from the organization Aids Free World, who then passed it to the Guardian.
“The regular sex abuse by peacekeeping personnel uncovered here & the United Nations’ appalling disregard for victims are stomach-turning, but the awful truth is that this isn’t uncommon. The UN’s instinctive response to sexual violence in its ranks – ignore, deny, cover up, dissemble – must be subjected to a truly independent commission of inquiry with total access, top to bottom, & full subpoena power,” she said.
Last month, Mr Kompass was accused of leaking a confidential UN report & breaching protocols.
Kompass was dismissed last week as director of field operations & is now under investigation by the UN office for internal oversight service (OIOS). One senior UN official even said that “it was his [Kompass’s] duty to know & comply” with UN protocols on confidential documents.
Bea Edwards from the US based Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection & advocacy organization, blasted the UN for what is little more than witch-hunt against someone who sought to protect children.
“We have represented many whistleblowers in the UN system over the years & in general the more serious the disclosure they make the more ferocious the retaliation. Despite the official rhetoric, there is very little commitment at the top of the organization to protect whistleblowers & a strong tendency to politicize every issue no matter how urgent.”
France’s Operation Sangaris in CAR began in December 2013. It is now being wound down as Paris hands over security to an 8,500-strong UN peacekeeping force deployed to contain the deadly conflict.
You may have heard of these stories a lot in the past few months & it is still continuing on in war-torn regions of Iraq & Syria by that certain group. Although, obviously, I don't condone it at all, I do want to bring a bit of balance to the Western media's coverage of this situation where young Yazidi girls & women are being captured & then sold for sexual slavery or forced marriage.
Western media keep harping about this incessantly but they never reported human trafficking & especially young girls, some as young as 8, & women being trafficked for sexual servitude by ... the armed forces of Western countries, with full blessing of UN, under the false pretenses of bringing peace to war-afflicted regions in the world.
Let's take an example from the 2010 movie, "The Whistleblower," starring Rachel Weisz, Monica Bellucci, & Vanessa Redgrave, to name a few. This movie is based on the true events of UN's whistleblower, Kathryn Bolkovac, who was an American cop, recruited as a UN peacekeeper by DynCorp International in post-war Bosnia & Herzegovina, in 1999.
While in Bosnia & Herzegovina, she came across the fact that several young Eastern European (Ukrainian & Russian) girls were being trafficked in Bosnia to serve as sexual slaves for UN peacekeepers. Of course, long story short, she tried to blow the whistle on this but ultimately, not only she was fired, the soldiers (American, Canadian, European etc) were let go & also escaped prosecution for essentially raping these under-age girls.
To top it all off, the defense contractor responsible for all of this, DynCorp International, won further million-$$$ contracts from US Pentagon, for Iraq & Afghanistan.
You can read all about this, with footnotes & links to more news stories & analysis, in the movie's Wikipedia page. Here's a little excerpt from that page in its "Aftermath" section.
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Consistent with Bolkovac's account, The Whistleblower portrays DynCorp International employees as participants in the postwar Bosnian sex trade with the UN turning a blind eye. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hosted a screening of the film & promised action would be taken to prevent further instances of human trafficking. Bolkovac responded, "Unfortunately, the widespread horror is already there. This is not going to be simple or a quick fix." She said that in addition to Bosnia, peacekeepers had violated human rights in Nigeria, Kosovo, Burundi, Sierra Leone, the Congo, Liberia, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Colombia, Guinea & Sudan. ... Following the theatrical release of The Whistleblower, The Guardian reported that other UN officials attempted to downplay the events depicted & that initiatives against trafficking in Bosnia were aborted.
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Now, let's look at this from a "numbers" perspective (of course, this would be a little difficult, since no hard numbers are available anywhere on this human trafficking business & the numbers are all estimate):
Per the Wikipedia page on Yazidis, & news stories on abduction & selling of Yazidi females in British newspapers, Daily Mail & Telegraph (from October 2014), about 5000 - 7000 girls have been sold into sexual slavery. Let's round that up to 10,000.
However, per the Equalitynow.org, "at least 20.9 million adults & children are bought & sold worldwide into commercial sexual servitude, forced labor & bonded labor." Of that 60% are sold for sexual servitude, & 98% of that 60% are made up of women & girls. So that estimate becomes about 12.3 million women are sold & bought for sexual servitude in the world. Even if we assume that only 0.5% of these 12.3 million girls are handled / used by UN peacekeepers, that's still 61,500 girls & women.
Now, let's summarize all this data:
Yazidi girls & women sold into slavery: about 10,000
Countries: Iraq & Syria (2 countries)
UN peacekeepers & defense contractors involved in sexual servitude of girls & women: about 61,500
Countries: Nigeria, Kosovo, Burundi, Sierra Leone, the Congo, Liberia, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Colombia, Guinea & Sudan. (11 countries)
The scale of young girls & women being used as sexual slaves by UN peacekeepers is far larger than what a certain group is doing in Iraq & Syria with Yazidi girls, but the Western media never showed this in the West.
If you are thinking why UN won't do anything to stop it.
Simple answer: it's a huge profitable business.
As we all may know that sex is the best way to release tension & stress (scientifically proven several times over). UN has 1000s of its peacekeepers in war-torn regions around the world. These peacekeepers are far from their families in highly stressful situations everyday. With this sexual slavery business, UN not only shows around the world that it is doing great work in war-torn regions by keeping peace there, but also helps its soldiers relieve their stress & tension with the help of these sexual slaves. Of course, the brothels & human trafficking rings get a huge customer in UN for their despicable business.
It's a win-win for both UN (& the nations who are sending their soldiers) & the human trafficking mafia groups. Loser, obviously, is the silent group of girls & women who are used as nothing more than a piece of meat by these soldiers.
(Disclaimer ... once again ... I am in no way condoning this widespread & increasing practice of selling girls & women for sexual servitude, by any group, by any religion, in any country. I am only trying to bring some perspective to the stories).
