From Seattle writer and consultant Matt Rosenberg...: UN Workers Investigated For Sexual Abuse of Refugees In Congo

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UN Workers Investigated For Sexual Abuse of Refugees In Congo

May 09, 2004

Refugee women and children are especially vulnerable to forced exchanges by relief workers of food, goods or money for sex.

The United Nations last week quietly announced its beginning of an official probe into allegations of sexual abuse against refugees (including minors) by UN mission personnel in the un-aptly named Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire).

The U.N. has been generally aware of such problems since at least last October, as this report issued by the UN News Centre shows.

"Under-Secretary-General Jean-Marie Gu�henno of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) told the Security Council in an open meeting on women and peace and security...."

Grave allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation of refugees and internally displaced women by some humanitarian and peacekeeping forces strengthened DPKO’s resolve to uphold a “zero-tolerance” stance on the problem, which not only violates human rights but undermines the very core of peacekeeping...

Perhaps you noticed the remarks in this link by an official specifically from the UN mission to Congo, talking about the need for more women in relief worker positions.

And here is the published policy of the UN misssion to Congo warning against sexual exploitation of refugee women and minors.

I'll say it again. Seems pretty damn clear the UN knew they had a problem there no later than last October. So why wait seven months to begin an investigation? And where's the U.S. media on this one? Asleep at the switch.

The investigation of the UN workers is dwarfed and yet magnified by the lay of the land. As Adam Hochschild writes for Amnesty USA, Congo is where you'll find:

...mass rapes by HIV-infected troops, arms hacked off with machetes, schools and hospitals ravaged, killers jubilantly draping themselves in the entrails of their victims, 10-year-old soldiers bearing AK-47s and hand grenades.
The death toll in this bewilderingly complex civil war has reached at least 3.3 million in less than five years, according to the International Rescue Committee. Another 3 million or more people are refugees, inside the country and out. Few of the dead are soldiers. Most are ordinary men, women, and children. They were deliberately targeted, caught in crossfire, or unlucky enough to have stumbled onto land mines.

Many—forced to flee their homes for forests and crowded refugee camps that turn into fields of mud in the rainy season—died of illness and malnutrition. This is the greatest concentration of war-related deaths anywhere on earth since World War II.

Africa is seldom popular with the U.S. media, and the Congo’s civil war has largely dropped out of the news....But the departure of journalists for other stories does not mean that the bloodshed has stopped. Despite a shaky coalition government at the national level, raids by rival warlords and the killing of civilians continue, particularly in the provinces of North and South Kivu, and in the Ituri district, all in the northeastern corner of the country.

The recent, temporary reinforcement of the small United Nations military force in Bunia, capital of Ituri, has not been substantial enough to stop the fighting that has claimed the lives of more than 50,000 people in Ituri alone in the last four years.

Gold, diamonds and timber have drawn in other African nations on both sides of the conflict. In "Breaking the Real Axis of Evil," Freedom House Vice-Chairman Mark Palmer writes, "Some investigative journalism has asserted that there are strong links between Congo's resources and international terrorist organizations, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda (Douglas Farah, "Digging Up Congo's Dirty Gems," Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2001). The democratic world, including the United States, needs to provide the necessary resources to fill this vacuum with UN forces (an expanded mandate...) to buttress the fragile peace process and to protect mines and forests that have provided plunder to the militias..."

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 9, 2004 02:00 PM

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