This four part series details the history of sexual assault by UN peacekeepers and what has been done to combat it. The UN peacekeeping mission began in 1948, right after WWII. In order to protect the soldiers who were deployed, the U.N provided its soldiers with impunity (all cases against peacekeepers had to be brought in the parent country, in order to protect the soldiers from fraudulent charges.)However, this protection has been the cause of many grievances for the women and children of these nations’ victims of sexual assault are unable to take their assailants to court.
Between 2004 and 2016, the UN received almost 2000 reports of sexual assault perpetrated by peacekeepers. In predominately black nations with a low socioeconomic status, the rate of sexual violence is much more significant and leads researchers to believe that the idea of racial and economic superiority and supremacy plays a role in the inflated volume of assaults. Even with this information readily available, the UN has not made a substantial effort to provide aid to the victims or prevent further assaults.
Read Article one HERE
Read Article two HERE
Read Article three HERE
Read Article four HERE
Why do some UN peacekeepers rape?
Azad Essa, Al Jazeera
August 3, 2017
UN peacekeepers are sent to the most war-ravaged countries on Earth, ostensibly to help them transition to peace.
But some stand accused of committing crimes against the very people they are supposed to protect.
According to a recent investigation by the Associated Press (AP), between 2004 and 2016, the United Nations received almost 2,000 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse against its peacekeepers.
The UN says it has a zero tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse, but survivors, activists, lawyers and human rights organisations say such crimes have been allowed to continue with impunity.
Through conversations with UN peacekeepers and officials, gender experts, academics, researchers and activists, as well as through an investigation of UN data, in this four-part series, we try to navigate these competing accounts to answer the question: How did some peacekeepers become predators?
Continue reading HERE
Is the UN sending the wrong people to keep the peace?
Azad Essa, Al Jazeera
August 3, 2017
UN peacekeepers are sent to the most war-ravaged countries on Earth, ostensibly to help them transition to peace.
But some stand accused of committing crimes against the very people they are supposed to protect.
According to a recent investigation by the Associated Press (AP), between 2004 and 2016, the United Nations received almost 2,000 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse against its peacekeepers.
The UN says it has a zero tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse, but survivors, activists, lawyers and human rights organisations say such crimes have been allowed to continue with impunity.
Continue Reading HERE
Do UN peacekeepers do more harm than good?
August 9,2017
In her 2015 book, Peaceland, Severine Autesserre, a professor of political science at Barnard College of Columbia University in the US, writes about a “community of interveners for whom peace is either the primary objective (like peacekeepers) or part of a broader set of goals (such as diplomats or development workers)” who often exist in a parallel world to the people they are meant to serve.
She argues that the way in which this community lives, talks and collaborates with locals reinforces “a pervasive power disparity between the interveners and their intended beneficiaries”.
The “peacekeeping economy” – in which millions of dollars arrive, circulate between external actors and rarely reach or benefit the local community – emboldens a sense of impunity and superiority among this community of interveners, says Marsha Henry, an associate professor at the London School of Economics’ Gender Institute in the UK, pointing to how peacekeepers and the aid community often live privileged, if precarious, lives in an economy that caters more to their needs than to the development goals of the country they are in.
Continue Reading HERE
Why do some peacekeepers rape? The full report
Read summary Article HERE