UN peacekeepers regularly barter goods for sex with people in the countries the world body is meant to be helping.
This is according to a draft UN report says.
The report, expected to be released this month, says major challenges remain a decade after a groundbreaking U.N. report first tackled the issue.
Among its findings: About a third of alleged sexual abuse involves minors under 18. Assistance to victims is “severely deficient.” The average investigation by (OIOS), UN Office of Internal Oversight Services which says it prioritizes cases involving minors or rape, takes more than a year.
The document says it has found that hundreds of women in Haiti and Liberia have been motivated by hunger and poverty to sell sex.
The report says investigators interviewed 231 people in Haiti last year who said they’d had transactional sexual relationships with U.N. peacekeepers.
“For rural women, hunger, lack of shelter, baby care items, medication and household items were frequently cited as the `triggering need,'” the report says. Urban and suburban women received “church shoes,’ cell phones, laptops and perfume, as well as money.
One of the U.N. staffers who produced the report would not comment Tuesday, saying it was better to wait until it was released publicly. A spokesman for the peacekeeping office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The U.N. doesn’t have a standing army and relies on troops contributed by member states. The states are responsible for investigating alleged misconduct by their troops, though the U.N. can step in if there’s no action.
In their response to the report’s findings, which is included in the draft, U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous and field support chief Atul Khare point out that while the number of peacekeepers has increased dramatically over the past decade, the number of allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation have gone down.
The U.N. prohibits “exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex,” and it strongly discourages sexual relationships between U.N. staff and people who receive their assistance, saying they are “based on inherently unequal power dynamics” and undermine the world body’s credibility.
