UN staff still exploiting those they are meant to protect
DESPITE everything that has been said, all the promises that have been made, and all the new policies and programmes implemented, the abuse continues.
UN peacekeepers and UN staff are still abusing the people they are meant to protect.
In the past four months, the UN said it received 70 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation involving UN and non-UN personnel working with its agencies and programmes. These involved 84 survivors, including 46 women, 17 girls (under 18 years of age), 12 females (ages unknown), one boy (under the age of 18), and five males of unknown ages. The alleged perpetrators include at least 80 men. In the first quarter of 2018, the UN said it had received 54 allegations.
Remember, these are allegations of abuse and exploitation as received by the UN. We know that the number of cases and incidents are likely to be much higher. These are after all societies struggling with conflict and lawlessness; to expect all survivors to come forward and report their incident to the very organisation tasked with protecting them is ludicrous.
The UN is well aware that such incidents damage the effectiveness of their work, and their legitimacy as an organisation. But the UN continues to think that “damage control” and protecting their reputation lies at the heart of this matter.
Little wonder, then, that while they might spout a “victim-first” or “zero-tolerance” policy, they remain obsessed with improving data collection and showcasing a willingness to be more transparent in this matter.
Of course, data collection and transparency are important, but the key issue remains something else: impunity and a lack of accountability for those peacekeepers guilty of these crimes.
The UN is said to have received 1 700 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers over the past 15 years.
To date, only 53 uniformed peacekeepers and one international civilian peacekeeper have been imprisoned for their crimes, a new documentary released by PBS last week, said.
Since peacekeepers enjoy immunity in the host country and the UN cannot prosecute, the responsibility falls on troop-contributing countries to hold their soldiers to account for abuse (rape) or exploitation (soliciting paid sex).
The reporting process is so long and so convoluted that by the time any investigation takes place, it is often too late to collect evidence, alleged perpetrators have already been “rotated” and the cases subsequently hang in limbo. In other words, it is very unlikely those 84 survivors who suffered some type of abuse or exploitation in the past four months will ever see justice.
This impunity allows UN peacekeepers, like UN civilian staff, to believe they are above any norm, or any law. Rape, abuse, exploitation are all manifestations of power and privilege; if there are no consequences for your actions, why would you stop exercising your ability to exploit?
In reporting this issue over the past two years, I have found two recurring themes that often left me bewildered and at times distraught. First, it was the refusal of UN staff to talk openly about the violence meted out on the host population by their colleagues.
While I could surely “understand” the “PR speak” of communication officers working for Department of Peacekeeping operations (DPKO) whose job (it would appear) is to protect the brand.
I could never understand the refusal of others working at the UN Children’s Fund, UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs or the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to speak plainly and honestly about abuses in the field.
Expat humanitarian workers live dangerously close lives: everyone knows what is going on.
There were people at organisations I’d be talking to about hunger, violence, child soldiers in the Central African Republic, who would fall silent when I asked for some advice, or detail, on the abuse by peacekeepers in CAR. How can a humanitarian deflect from the inhumanity meted out to another human being, especially one living in such precarious conditions?
Second, I often heard about the superiority complex of peacekeepers and aid workers in the field. Is it really surprising that a bunch of entitled do-gooders would come to “dark” places and end up acting out in perverse ways?
As has been revealed in the past year, an entire spectrum of humanitarian and aid agencies (not just peacekeepers) have been implicated in cases of sexual abuse, exploitation, including rape and harassment. From Save the Children, to the Red Cross, to Oxfam – the most prestigious, hard-working of organisations have been shown to have dealt poorly with cases within their own organisation.
Just as peacekeepers are “rotated”, so too are “predators” moved between aid agencies.
In so doing, these aid agencies, like peacekeepers, put their reputation ahead of survivors of abuse. They also put their colleagues ahead of their task – which is to uplift, rehabilitate or assist those living in abject poverty or in distress.
Their refusal to talk or hold properly accountable those accused of such crimes is simply another manifestation of the “boys’ club” that’s created so many of these conflicts and awful conditions in the first place; the instinct is to protect the tribe, the damage to the civilian host population unfortunate collateral. All of which sounds like a familiar problem to me.
It is time to treat rape and sexual exploitation in the humanitarian sector as the structural problem that it is. Like colonisation, racism, rampant capitalism, or any type of oppression and exploitation, it has to be addressed and dismantled with fervour. Everything else is akin to sugar coating.
Essa is a journalist based in New York City