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Coming to light as it did at the same time that the multibillion-dollar Oil-for-Food scandal in Iraq was also grabbing headlines worldwide, the Congo sex abuse scandal was a great embarrassment for the UN. The widespread publicity surrounding the issue prompted a personal apology from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was under intense pressure to resign his position as head of the UN as the list of UN scandals grew longer every day.
“I am afraid there is clear evidence that acts of gross misconduct have taken place. This is a shameful thing for the United Nations to have to say, and I am absolutely outraged by it,” confessed Annan. “I have long made it clear that my attitude to sexual exploitation and abuse is one of zero tolerance, without exception, and I am determined to implement this policy in the most transparent manner.”
Annan pledged to correct the problem, although he insisted that it was isolated to a relatively small segment of the UN contingent in Africa. Unfortunately, Annan had used virtually identical “zero tolerance” language previously, when a joint report in 2001 by the Save the Children organization and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had identified “widespread” problems of sexual abuse of refugees by UN personnel on the West Coast of Africa.
Ironically, that very same UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, was forced to resign in early 2005 after being charged with sexual harassment by a fifty-one-year-old female administrator who claimed that he put his arm around her waist and pressed his groin against her. Lubbers, aged sixty-five, denied the charges, but four other women also filed similar claims of unwanted advances, and a UN internal investigation determined that he had engaged in a “pattern of sexual harassment” against female employees. Lubbers, who had served as High Commissioner since 2000, had previously been the Netherlands’ prime minister from 1982 to 1994.
Annan’s official UN apology offers scant comfort to those who know how the organization operates. In the first place, the official UN regulations barring sexual relations with prostitutes and children under age eighteen apply only to UN staff employees. The UN has no authority whatsoever to discipline the soldiers in its peacekeeping forces, who are also immune from prosecution by local authorities. All the UN can do is send them back to their own countries for trial, where even the most serious charges are usually dropped, or at the very least drastically reduced. Moreover, even where the official regulations do apply to UN personnel, they are so seldom enforced that they are widely disregarded by most. In fact, in another confidential internal UN report, Jordan’s Prince Zeid Raad Al Hussein, a special adviser to Annan and the leader of one investigation, said candidly, “The situation appears to be one of ‘zero compliance with zero tolerance’ throughout the mission.”9 Thus it appears that nothing very significant has been done to curtail what theWeekly Standard described in January 2005 as “a predatory sexual culture among vulnerable refugees—from relief workers who demand sexual favors in exchange for food to UN troops who rape women at gunpoint.”
Looking back over the past decade or so, we find that the same kinds of problems have plagued the UN all over the world—from Cambodia and East Timor in Southeast Asia to Bosnia and Kosovo in Southeastern Europe; and on the African continent from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea on the west coast to Somalia and Ethiopia on the east.
Eyewitness accounts of violence and corruption, as well as rampant sexual abuse, are now being published with increasing frequency as those who know the truth are finding the courage and the voice to tell it. Many times the victims of these predatory crimes, especially the women who have been raped, don’t readily come forward for fear of later reprisals. The latest report of a victim who did come forward is from Haiti, where a twenty-three-year-old woman has reported to police that three UN soldiers from Pakistan forcibly raped her. The soldiers have disputed that claim, saying that she was a prostitute and they paid her for consensual sex. The soldiers “grabbed and pulled on my pants, had me lie down on the ground, and then raped me,” the woman told a Haitian radio station. UN officials say they are investigating the incident.11 While many such “he said/she said” cases may never be resolved with certainty, some abuses and atrocities have been confirmed. The actions of certain UN troops in Somalia from 1995 to 1997, for example, are well documented—including acts of rape, torture, and murder.
WorldNetDaily, an independent Internet news service, published an article by Joseph Farah back in June 1997 detailing some of the UN’s known abuses of power in Somalia by peacekeepers from various countries. The article, entitled “Those UN Peacekeeping Atrocities,” is not for the squeamish: “In 1995, a group of Canadian paratroopers were investigated for torturing a Somali to death and killing three others,” reported Farah. That’s pretty mild compared to what comes next. Between 1995 and 1997, fifteen members of a Belgian regiment were accused of “acts of sadism and torture” against Somalis. One Somali child died after being locked in a storage container for forty-eight hours; he had been accused of stealing food. A Belgian sergeant was photographed urinating on the corpse of a Somali, whom he was later accused of murdering. Another Belgian soldier allegedly made a Somali, presumably a Muslim, eat pork, drink salt water, and then eat his own vomit. But that’s not all.
“How sensational is this non-story?” queried Farah. “Yesterday, the London Telegraph, in a combined dispatch with AFP (Agence France Press), reported that Belgian troops roasted a Somali boy. Roasted him! And what was the sentence for this peace crime committed during an operation dubbed ironically ‘Restore Hope’? A military court sentenced two paratroopers to a month in jail and a fine of 200 pounds.” Sadly, there was more to come; Farah hadn’t even gotten to the Italian peacekeepers yet. One battalion commander reportedly sexually abused and then strangled a thirteen-year-old Somali boy. In 1993, Italian soldiers allegedly beat to death a fourteen-year-old boy who sold a fake medal. Then the finale: “Earlier this month, gruesome photos were published in a Milan magazine of Italian soldiers torturing a Somali youth and abusing and raping a Somali girl. Paratroopers claim they were specifically trained in methods of torture to aid interrogation. According to one witness, Italian soldiers tied a young Somali girl to the front of an armored personnel carrier and raped her while officers looked on,” Farah wrote. Questioned about these abuses, an Italian paratrooper reportedly replied, “What’s the big deal? They are just n——— anyway.”