Who Guards Innocent Civilians against UN troops

A phenomenon is taking place with the deployment of UN peace keeping forces – more and more peacekeepers are committing sexual assaults against women and young girls.

On Friday, November 2, the UN reported that 108 Sri Lankan troops were being repatriated to Sri Lanka after being found guilty of committing sexual assaults against young girls and women in Haiti.

We can now add Haiti to the list of other UN peacekeeping missions where allegations of sexual misconduct have been made against UN troops. Other missions include Sierra Leon, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Liberia, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Kosovo and East Timor. More than 800 UN troops were recently suspended amid claims of committing sex abuse in Ivory Coast.

The news coming from Haiti is very disturbing in that while these troops are repatriated for “inappropriate” sexual actions, they face court martial in their home countries only when the allegations have been substantiated. What this means is that most troops walk free from court and in most cases, they are discharged from their country’s armed forces.

This is not a good enough response to the allegations pertaining to the rape of women and minors. Facing prosecution in their home countries disqualifies due process, because those making the allegations are more likely to be absorbed into the general population of the mission area, never to be heard from again, thus enabling the accused to claim that their prosecutions are unfair due to the fact that their ability to cross examine the alleged victims is not possible.

The usual charge brought against the UN troops on their repatriation is the charge of conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline; they are given a few days detention in a military brig and dismissed. This was the case in 2002 when an Irish solider, serving with the UN in Eritrea was found guilty of making a pornographic movie using underage local prostitutes. The solider, an NCO spent 16 days in military detention and was dismissed from the Irish defense forces.

More recently, UN troops have been accused of abusing young girls in Southern Sudan. A number of Bangladeshi soldiers serving with the UN in the region were sent home due to allegations made against them.

In a book by three UN field workers, titled "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth", chronicles the experiences of a doctor, a human-rights official and a secretary in U.N. operations in Cambodia, Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, Liberia and Bosnia. In one controversial volume, it is alleged that some U.N. officials demanded that 15 percent of their local staff's salaries go directly to them instead; that Bulgaria sent freed criminals to serve as peacekeepers; and that incompetent U.N. security has cost lives.

This all leads to the question, “Can UN peacekeeping missions be trusted to provide the level of competency to protect innocent civilians from rouge elements within those missions?” I don’t think so and if the UN does not move to set up its own internal disciplinary code of conduct, in which it tries and convicts the rapists, child molesters and all those that are found to have committed serious crimes, from within its own missions, the trust placed in the “Blue Helmets” and the “Blue Flag” will quickly be lost.