By Colum Lynch
03/13/2005

Read the entire article.

Below is an excerpt of an article from the Washington Post:

UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations is facing new allegations of sexual misconduct by U.N. personnel in Burundi, Haiti, Liberia and elsewhere, which is complicating the organization's efforts to contain a sexual abuse scandal that has tarnished its Nobel Prize-winning peacekeepers in Congo.

The allegations indicate that a series of measures the United Nations has taken in recent years have failed to eliminate a culture of sexual permissiveness that has plagued its far-flung peacekeeping operations over the last 12 years. But senior U.N. officials say they have signaled their seriousness by imposing new reforms and forcing senior U.N. military commanders and officials to step down if they do not curb such practices.

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"This is a problem in every mission around the world," said Sarah Martin, an expert on the subject at Refugees International who recently conducted investigations into misconduct by U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti and Liberia. "If you don't have a strict code of discipline, accountability and transparency in the process, then you're going to continue to have a problem."

Peacekeepers in several Liberian communities routinely engage in sex with girls, according to an internal U.N. letter obtained by The Washington Post. In the town of Gbarnga, peacekeepers were seen patronizing a club called Little Lagos, "where girls as young as 12 years of age are engaged in prostitution, forced into sex acts and sometimes photographed by U.N. peacekeepers in exchange for $10 or food or other commodities," according to the letter, which a representative of the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) wrote Feb. 8 to the mission's second-ranking official.

The letter also stated that community leaders in the town of Robertsport have accused Namibian peacekeepers there of "using administrative building premises and the surrounding bush to undertake sex acts with girls between the age of 12-17."

The letter said the U.N. peacekeeping mission had failed to address some misconduct reports. In response, the U.N. special representative in Liberia, Jacques Klein, ordered an investigation, according to an internal U.N. memo dated Feb. 18. U.N. Deputy Secretary General Louise Frechette, meanwhile, traveled this month to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast to urge the missions' leadership to crack down on sexual misconduct.

The United Nations also opened an investigation earlier this month into allegations of sexual abuse of minors by U.N. troops in the Central African country of Burundi. "Over the past few weeks I have learned to my deep regret that, despite firm instructions to the contrary, some staff members continue to indulge in unacceptable and potentially illegal behavior," Carolyn McKaskie, the senior U.N. representative, wrote in a March 10 internal memo to members of the U.N. mission.
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Martin, of Refugees International, said the degree of military discipline varies from mission to mission. In Liberia, she said, uniformed U.N. peacekeepers and U.N. civilians openly frequent brothels in marked U.N. vehicles. She also noted that some contingents, including the Namibians, are encamped in local villages, placing them in direct contact with locals.