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Must Boys Be Boys? Access to UN Complaint System

Peacekeeping & Sexual Exploitation Report

Improving Access to the UN Complaint System

To build trust in local communities so that community members feel confident enough to lodge complaints, the UN complaint system must be transparent, easy to access, and accountable to the local population.

UN procedures for investigating a case against military personnel are different from those for investigating a case against civilians. Service providers for victims of rape and sexual exploitation in Liberia and Haiti are concerned because the procedures are ambiguous to them. As a US government representative told us, “We know bad stuff is happening, but it is hard to find out who is responsible…. If we get credible information, we’ll get complaints into the proper channels. But it’s not always clear to us how to do that.” The UN is dealing with this by appointing sexual abuse focal points and code of conduct officers. As discussed above, these positions are often filled well after the start of the peacekeeping missions. In addition, they are often unfilled for months on end. While DPKO requested that UNMIL appoint a focal point on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in April 2004, it wasn’t filled officially until much later. In MINUSTAH, as of April 1, 2005, there was still no Code of Conduct officer, even though the mission was deployed in June 2004.

Information on how to report an abuse and what will happen to the perpetrator must be clear to everyone within the missions, their colleagues in NGOs and, most importantly, the local community. Part of the difficulty that the UN has faced in investigating allegations is that the women or girls involved refuse to give evidence against the peace. Extreme sexual violence has been an integral part of the war in the countries in which the peacekeepers are stationed. In these countries, the women are often terrified of all military, foreign and local, making any formal investigation extremely difficult.

Victims are often pressured by their families to keep quiet, a serious obstacle to reporting. Violators sometimes remain unpunished due to lack of hard evidence. It is difficult to investigate allegations while maintaining the victim’s right to privacy and an employee’s right to due process. Investigators in Liberia pointed out, “If we don’t have hard evidence, we cannot accuse someone. People do not want to come forward with names.” Likewise, service providers complain about the investigation procedures. “UNMIL appears to be going overboard on any accusation of rape, but to protect their employees. No one takes the victims seriously. There is no understanding at all about protection of the victims.”

The Zeid Report states that in the case of MONUC many of the victims were “frightened, poorly educated women and children who had difficulty identifying their foreign assailants.” It recommends that the use of “enthusiastic amateurs” be suspended and that professionals who have experience in investigating sex crimes must be involved. It further suggests that “where positive identification of those accused cannot be achieved through traditional methods, the mechanism must have access to modern techniques of forensic identification.”³⁵ While this is admirable, it is unlikely that the countries in which these violations take place will have access to such equipment and procedures. It is essential that donors support this bold recommendation by the Zeid report and begin to modernize forensic collection in developing countries to effectively prosecute violators.

While DPKO has begun to distribute materials to publicize the problems of trafficking and exploitation, neither mission in Haiti nor Liberia have public information officers or programs designed to specifically target local women to explain to them their rights and how to report a crime. One expert on trafficking pointed out that while donors funded DPKO to produce posters targeted towards the peacekeepers, there was no mechanism to evaluate what messages resonate with peacekeepers or to determine how effective this campaign was. “There must be programs that you can implement, not just posters and catchphrases. In order to effectively implement a program, one usually does research beforehand, designs a program based on the data collected and then measures the impacts and modifies the program. I don’t see any evidence that the UN is planning on doing this.“

The Zeid Report calls for outreach to the local community. This is essential because crimes regarding sex are the most underreported crimes in every culture. For countries like Liberia and Haiti, where discussion about rape is taboo and where there are no effective police departments that could or would investigate these abuses, it is very unlikely that victims will report without assistance and assurance that they will be protected. Every person in the reporting chain—the person who gets the initial call, the police, the investigators, the officers—must understand and practice gender sensitivity. For complicated issues such as sexual exploitation and abuse, where the victims are not always certain that it is their right to complain, it can be almost impossible. The problem of sexual exploitation and abuse is not something that should be addressed only by international organizations. Local women’s organizations must be included and supported in educating women on their rights and how to protect themselves.

In addition, the UN’s policy of silence around these issues has allowed the local media, which sometimes rely on gossip and unproven facts, to control the dialogue within the local communities on the extent of sexual exploitation and abuse. In Haiti, for instance, MINUSTAH has been able to respond fairly rapidly to allegations of sexual misconduct. Some of the cases were unfounded and the suspect was cleared of any wrong-doing. By clearly and transparently communicating with the local population, MINUSTAH was able to also discourage false reporting.

While there are radio programs that occasionally address gender-based violence or women’s issues at UN public information radio stations, there is no evidence that the UN peacekeeping missions actively try to work with local women’s organizations in a formal manner. Populations are not surveyed to see what message resonates with women and there are no measurements of the effectiveness of public information campaigns as there are with other behavior change campaigns targeted to developing country populations. “We’re happy to put anything on the air,” said a public information officer in Liberia, “We just need someone to develop the programs.”

“The UN wants to fix these problems but they do it on the cheap. They claim that they don’t have money and modify programs that may or may not have been successful in one country for another with very little interaction with local civil society or women’s groups,” one peacekeeping expert told Refugees International.

There must also be a feedback mechanism that informs the victims of the outcome of the investigation and the judicial process, if any. Peacekeeping troops report to the military command of their own countries. If someone is found guilty, that person is sent back to his country for discipline. The United Nations is attempting to ensure that peacekeepers found guilty of discipline infractions are prohibited from serving in future missions. However, it has been difficult for outside organizations to track what, if any, punishment occurs when the violator is repatriated. “This is particularly a problem with civilian personnel, many of whom are not actually employees of the United Nations but are contractors,” a peacekeeping researcher told RI. “Not only are we unsure if they are punished, we suspect that they are sometimes just rotated to another mission.” Accordingly, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for victims and their families to determine what, if any, actions have been taken. In order to trust the UN enough to begin reporting violations, victims must know they will be protected and treated with respect when they report and that the UN will take action against the perpetrators.

The Zeid Report makes far reaching recommendations regarding accountability. These include financial reparations for victims of abuse by garnishing peacekeeper’s wages and DNA testing to prove paternity that will be used to make peacekeepers provide child support to the children they father while on mission. In particular, the recommendations for on-site courts martial are crucial. The local community must be involved in the process and see the results to increase their trust in the rule of law.

Refugees International therefore recommends that:

Public Information directors for UN peacekeeping missions design programs along with local women’s groups to inform and educate the local population regarding sexual exploitation and abuse;
Public Information programs in UN Peacekeeping missions communicate the findings of investigations into sexual exploitation and abuse;
The UN actively move to protect “whistleblowers” by strengthening confidentiality rules;
The UN install a person focused on coordinating actions towards trafficking in all UN peacekeeping missions.