Leaked UN report details French soldiers' abuse against young African boys

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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http://rt.com/news/254205-french-soldiers-abuse-boys/

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.

Education is a basic human right - which is why private schools must be resisted

Nothing much for me to say in this blog post, since whatever the UN rapporteur on the right to education said in this op-ed, I said some similar points in my previous blog post how privatisation of education hurts the poor, but then, that's the main objective point of modern businesses involved in the education business worldwide; privatise all levels of education everywhere & tell parents that you better provide private & high quality education to your kids (even if they need to kill themselves to produce the money for school fees) or your kids will never prosper economically (which, in itself, is a complete lie).
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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/apr/23/education-is-a-basic-human-right-why-private-schools-must-be-resisted

At the beginning of the new millennium, the international community made a commitment to achieve universal primary education for all boys & girls. Today, 15 years later, we find huge gaps between these commitments & reality.
 
Across the world, 58 million children still don’t have access to schools, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa & South Asia. Millions more fail to graduate, or fail to learn what they need to participate in society meaningfully.
 
Capitalising on the inability of governments to cope with rising demands on public learning, private education providers are mushrooming. I see this not as progress, but as an indictment of governments that have failed to meet their obligation to provide universal, free & high-quality education for all.
 
Education is not a privilege of the rich & well-to-do; it is the inalienable right of every child. The state must discharge its responsibility as guarantor & regulator of education as a fundamental human entitlement & as a public cause. The provision of basic education, free of cost, is not only a core obligation of states but also a moral imperative.
 
Privatisation cripples the notion of education as a universal human right & – by aggravating marginalisation & exclusion – runs counter to the fundamental principles of human rights law. It creates social inequity.
 
The admission policy in private schools is based on the ability to pay, & on the socio-economic background of parents. As a result, private schools lack the diversified system of learning & cultural plurality that is so necessary today. They promote market economy values rather than the humanist mission of education.
 
Disturbingly, some in the international community are pushing for greater privatisation in education. The World Bank, a longstanding supporter of the approach, has recently been joined by other international bodies. At the end of 2014, the African Development Bank, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Union commission, & the UN Development Programme released a report promoting increased private sector involvement in education. The study concluded that “Africa must build a vibrant private sector that supports the development of a dynamic primary education system”. This call has been echoed by some government officials in Africa & elsewhere.
 
In the 1980s & 90s, when developing countries first made significant cuts to their public health & education spending under structural adjustment, international financial institutions, along with the largest donors, promoted user fees & increased private sector service delivery. The World Bank’s current policy of encouraging & supporting profit-seeking multinationals that provide education is a matter of serious concern, given the devastating impact this strategy has on the right to education.
 
As a recent Oxfam briefing paper has suggested, governments should not allow low-fee private schools, & should restore education as an essential public service. As private education becomes big business, learning must be protected from the forces of privatisation.
 
According to a study on private education by the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID), a potentially very large number of low-fee private schools, which target poorer families in developing countries, are unregistered. These schools save costs by hiring ill-trained teachers & running large classes in substandard school buildings. Such “edu-businesses”, as they have come to be known, are an unsatisfactory replacement for the good public education governments should be providing.
 
Huge commercial publicity often tempts parents to opt for private schools in the expectation that their children will receive a better education. They believe that private schools are more efficient, & that competition improves outcomes.
 
However, such beliefs are rarely supported by evidence. The DfID study, for instance, suggests private schools do no better than state ones.
 
The cost of privatising education lies not just with school fees but also with the damage done to the public good. Fees, however small, hit the poorest & most vulnerable hardest. Sometimes, this means the oldest son receives an education while daughters stay at home. Inequalities in society grow when the poorest are excluded.
 
In the worst cases, corruption undermines the system. Headteachers may require special payments to accept students, & teachers may charge for private tutelage. We must constantly remind states of their obligation under human rights law to establish conditions & standards for private education providers, & of the need to maintain a transparent & effective system to monitor these standards, with sanctions for abusive practices.
 
Parents, community, teachers and students must be encouraged to speak out against the commercialisation of education, acting as vigilant observers & reporters of abusive practices. Governments must empower human rights institutions, watchdogs & other mechanisms to investigate alleged violations of the right to education.
 
I’m not saying traditional public schools are the only solution. Community schools, locally organised & run with state support, can meaningfully complement government efforts to provide education & are an alternative to privatisation.
 
Governments must face the education challenge head on. Investment in education must be prioritised, using at least 4% of GDP, & reform priorities should be established with assistance from civil society & international donors, development banks & the UN.
 
Leaving these challenges to the private sector may seem easier. But when we ask what kind of world we want, we do not say one for those who have, & another for those who don’t. Let’s not create education systems that promote inequality – there is enough of that already. The international development agenda must aim to eliminate private schools, not champion them.
 

Kishore Singh is the UN special rapporteur on the right to education.

DfID accused of heightening inequality through support for private sector

A great article highlighting how Department of International Development of UK is investing millions of aid money, in poor / developing countries, in private health & education projects. Although, the article is focused on UK's department of international development, I am very certain that Canadian, American, Australian, & other European countries' departments of international development use their aid money to invest in similar private projects in developing countries.

This way, not only, these countries show to the world & their own public that they are heavily investing aid money in developing countries. But what they don't show that that aid money is not actually helping any poor person but a few people are becoming rich with that aid money. This is evident in the end result of all these millions of aid money is still unable to fight poverty & millions of people in developing countries are further falling into poverty.

The article also confirms what I've been saying about Malala for quite a few years now. Malala is the poster child of private education industry. It's a huge industry on a worldwide scale. Education keeps getting unaffordable for the masses. But the society is being programmed to think that education is necessary if you want your descendants to do better economically (which is, in itself, is hogwash, since your network will get you a good job, not your education or qualifications).

Malala wants more & more girls to be educated in Pakistan. That, in itself, is a very noble idea. But, companies like, Pearson, has taken that noble idea & made it that more & more Pakistanis should get their kids (boys & girls) into education, which, is private education & not free & affordable public education. Private education businesses increase their businesses.

Private education is an exploitation business. When a poor family has only enough money to send a few kids to school, the sons are preferred over daughters. Is it fair? No. Is it necessary? Yes.
 
Sons in countries like India, Pakistan, China are considered bread winners for the family & will, most likely, take care of their old parents & their own families. Daughters, on the other hand, are married off to another family & will, most likely, cannot take care of their old parents.

The best way to provide affordable & quality education to ALL kids in the developing world is to provide them with FREE education; not private & fee-based, regardless of how low that fee is. If you are going to provide fee-based education, you are either going to exclude a large part of the public from ever accessing that education level or you need to uplift the economic conditions of the masses through jobs & livable wages.
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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/apr/24/dfid-private-sector-support-inequality-global-justice-now-report

The UK government is driving inequality in the world’s poorest countries by “dogmatically” funding private sector health & education projects instead of using aid money to boost public systems, a report has said.
 
Rather than addressing the needs of the world’s poorest people, the Department for International Development’s (DfID) close relationship with the private sector is filling the pockets of big corporations, according to Profiting from poverty, again, a study published on Friday by the campaigning group Global Justice Now (GJN).
 
Nick Dearden, director of GJN, said: “Aid should be used to support human needs by building up public services in countries that don’t have the same levels of economic privilege as the UK. So it’s shocking that DfID is dogmatically promoting private health & education when it’s been shown that this approach actually entrenches inequality & endangers access.”

The report also questioned DfID’s appointment of Sir Michael Barber, a senior executive at Pearson, the world’s largest maker of textbooks & academic materials, as its chief advisor for education in Pakistan, saying it presented a conflict of interest. DfID oversees an ambitious £350m health & education programme in Pakistan & has partnered with Pearson on a project in Tanzania & Zimbabwe.

“It seems highly inappropriate that executives from a company like Pearson can be acting in an official capacity at DfID, while their company provides commercial services that would directly benefit from the type of decisions being taken by DfID,” Dearden said.
 
A DfID spokesman said: “We have firm policies in place to prevent any conflict of interest in our work.”

Pearson, which operates in more than 70 countries, launched its affordable learning programme in 2012. The initiative is a for-profit venture fund that uses capital investment “to help millions of children in the world access a quality education in a cost effective, profitable & scalable manner”, according to the company.
 
On Friday, a group of US, British & South African NGOs & teachers’ groups issued an open letter to John Fallon, Pearson’s CEO. The letter read: “By supporting the expansion of low-fee private schooling & other competitive practices, Pearson is essentially ensuring that a large number of the world’s most vulnerable children have no hope of receiving a free, quality education.”

The open letter was released on Friday to coincide with the company’s annual general meeting. It was signed by the American Federation of Teachers, the UK’s National Union of Teachers, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, the Association of Teachers & Lecturers, Action Aid UK & the National Education Association.
 
The UK has invested more heavily in private sector projects than other rich countries, drawing criticism from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (Icai). “DfID often seems to behave more like a hedge fund [than an aid agency], investing capital alongside banking partners like JP Morgan,” GJN said.
 
DfID is working with companies including Coca-Cola, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) & Adam Smith International & is promoting the role of private sector partners in its biggest health & education projects, according to GJN.
 
The GJN report said DfID’s efforts to promote low-cost private schools in poor countries are “misplaced & dangerous”.

The Girls’ Education Challenge, a £355m DfID programme designed to get more girls in school, is managed by PwC & includes a partnership with Coca-Cola in Nigeria.
 
In Kenya, DfID has partnered with Adam Smith International in a £25m project that seeks to get 5,000 Kenyans enrolled in low-cost private schools.
 
DfID has also channelled millions of pounds into the harnessing non-state actors for better health for the poor (Hanshep) scheme, which promotes private sector investment in the health sectors of poor countries.
 
Kishore Singh, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to education, is among those who have expressed reservations about private education. “I see [the growth of private education] not as progress, but as an indictment of governments that have failed to meet their obligation to provide universal, free & high-quality education for all,” said Singh.
 
A DfID spokesman said: “The UK strives to get the best possible outcomes for poor people & takes a pragmatic stance on how services should be delivered. In some circumstances (parts of India, Kenya, Nigeria & Pakistan, for example), this includes developing partnerships with low-fee private schools.

“DfID works with the private sector in situations where the public sector is not sufficiently present (the slums of Nairobi for example) or where state provision is so weak that the private sector has stepped in to fill the gap. Recognising that fees are still a major barrier to access for the poor, DfID’s support includes voucher schemes that subsidise access to low-fee private schools for the poorest.”