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A United
Nations peacekeeper is seen standing on patrol behind a U.N. flag.
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A group of activists is calling for the United Nations to
remove immunity granted to civilian and police personnel in peacekeeping
missions, saying doing so will deter sexual abuse and exploitation of the
people they are sent to help.
Paula Donovan of
Aids-free world, the group that launched the campaign Wednesday in New
York, said that currently U.N. civilian and police personnel on
peacekeeping missions are protected by immunity until the U.N.
secretary-general waives it.
“[Let] everybody in the
world know that when the secretary-general and the United Nations say zero
tolerance for sexual exploitation and abuse, it doesn’t mean we will put that
on hold until the secretary-general decides whether we will have just a little
bit of tolerance or a little bit more,” said Donovan.
VOA reports:
The group, which includes
former South African first lady Graca Machel and Canadian Lt. General Romeo
Dallaire, who raised the alarm on the 1994 Rwandan genocide, is launching its
“Code Blue” campaign in the wake of a child sex abuse scandal.
Several French, Chadian
and Equatorial Guinean soldiers deployed in the Central African Republic are
alleged to have traded food for sexual acts with young boys there. The abuse
came to light after a U.N. aid worker leaked an internal report detailing the
allegations.
The abuses took
place in 2014, and the accused troops were not U.N. peacekeepers at the time,
but the organization has been criticized for not stopping the abuse as soon as
it learned of it, and for temporarily suspending the official who leaked the
report. France has opened a criminal investigation into the matter.
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Retired
lieutenant-general Romeo Dallaire, author of They Fight Like Soldiers They Die
Like Children, wants young people to use social networking to save children in
other countries from having to go to war. Photo: John Mahoney, Postmedia News
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U.N. Assistant
Secretary-General for Field Support Anthony Banbury said civilian staff are
covered by “functional immunity,” which limits protection to events that happen
during the conduct of their duties and does not cover crimes such as rape,
while military personnel under the U.N. banner are under the jurisdiction
of their home countries, not the United Nations.
“We as an organization
have an interest in having criminal accountability against individuals working
for the U.N. who are alleged to have committed these crimes,” he said. “We want
justice done. We want them not wearing a blue beret or holding a blue contract;
we want them behind bars. We want them in jail.”
In 2014, fifty-one
allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse were reported in nine U.N.
peacekeeping missions. Fourteen cases involved staff, 13 cases related to
police and 24 cases involved military contingents or observers.
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