National Post (National Edition)
A NATIONAL DISGRACE
A REPORT ON ABUSE BY CANADIAN PEACEKEEPERS IN HAITI MAKES FOR GRIM READING
THIS IS NOT A NEW PROBLEM. WE HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING UNPREPARED FOR IT.
Just over three years ago, in these pages, I warned the Liberal government against joining a UN peacekeeping mission in Africa. They didn’t listen to me in the end (they never do, weirdly). But I stand by my argument — and it’s even more true today, sadly, than it was then. But this time, the problem isn’t the UN’s dysfunction. It’s ours.
In 2016, as Canada was looking around for a UN mission in Africa to contribute troops to, the UN was grappling with a horrific failure. In South Sudan, a residential compound home to international aid workers was assaulted by a large group of armed men — South Sudanese soldiers, in fact. There were UN military units nearby, and the aid workers inside the compound frantically called for help. The UN forces received these calls but did absolutely nothing and remained in their barracks. The South Sudanese soldiers were able to break inside the compound and went on a bloody rampage. One local man, a journalist, was executed. At least five women were gangraped by the mob, virtually everyone else was tortured or beaten. And, again, there were armed UN units just a short drive from the compound. They had heard the calls for help. They stayed put.
It was a shocking failure, but not an isolated one. Too many UN missions have stood idly by while armed groups have raped and pillaged their way through the local population. Indeed, all too often, the UN forces themselves partake in such atrocities, using the helpless locals for savage entertainment. Accountability is rare and almost always insufficient.
Canada had no business joining such missions, I wrote in 2016. Sadly, a damning report by the CBC suggests that Canada actually would fit in quite well.
The report, published Monday, makes for grim reading. It details how at least six Canadian peacekeepers deployed to Haiti in recent years have been accused of sexual misconduct with members of the local population — due to the inherent imbalance of power, our peacekeepers are outright forbidden from engaging in sex with the locals. The Canadians were police officers, not military personnel, participating in a program operated by the RCMP (though the officers can be drawn from other police forces across the country). In the six instances, UN investigators concluded that the Canadian personnel had indeed been involved in the sexual exploitation of local civilians. And in every case, Canada did ... basically nothing.
Two of the six officers, the CBC reported, simply retired, thus evading any accountability through the police chain of command. In two cases, the legal process is ongoing, and in two others, officers were suspended from duty, for five and nine days respectively. Further, in the cases the CBC reported on, the swift removal of the Canadian personnel from Haiti essentially short-circuited any further efforts by the UN to offer accountability or continue their investigations (much to the UN’s reported anger). In two cases, children were born due to these incidents of exploitation.
I doubt there is a full solution to the problem of sexual exploitation of vulnerable people during a war, or the aftermath of a conflict or natural disaster. As much as we would all like there to be one, the grim reality is that the deployment of large groups of armed men into areas where the local population is vulnerable is always going to incur some level of sexual exploitation. The decision to deploy the forces has to be made with that understanding — will the force do enough good, in aggregate, to offset the inevitable harms such deployments will incur? It’s an ugly form of calculus, but a necessary one.
Even while accepting that we’ ll likely never eliminate the problem, there are absolutely things that can be done to minimize the risk and maximize the accountability for those who perpetrate these crimes. You’d think that Canada — oh-so progressive Canada, which lionizes the UN and our part in creating modern peacekeeping — would be a world leader in that field. We aren’t.
As the CBC discovered when poring through hundreds of pages of obtained documents, there is, astonishingly, a gap in our laws. Though some Canadian peacekeeping personnel would face legal consequences in Canada for such offences, others — including police — fall outside the applicable definitions under the Criminal Code. That’s why, in two of the instances the CBC found, officers were given a few days’ suspension. The slap on the wrist was all that could be done.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland gave the CBC a quote that’s spectacular for its degree of understatement. It “is totally unacceptable for (officers) to harm the people who they are sent to protect. And it is important for us to be sure that we have a framework here in Canada that allows us to deal with any offences committed outside the country.” Indeed! And it’s baffling that Canada, of all countries, and this government, in particular, haven’t taken the necessary steps to establish that framework.
This is not a new problem. We have no business being unprepared for it. Canada can’t fix human nature but it can put in place the right kind of policies to maximize deterrence and accountability. Three years ago, I worried that Canada had no business sending its personnel to serve under dysfunctional UN commands. That’s still true. But it appears that Canada is as dysfunctional at home as the UN is abroad. We can do a lot better than that. What the hell are we waiting for?
And, perhaps more to the point, what are we doing sending our people out into the world without first taking the steps at home to make it possible to punish those (thankfully few) Canadian personnel who dishonour their country by exploiting the helpless? Our refusal to take this relatively straightforward, and abundantly necessary, step is an absolute disgrace.