Bureaucratic Criminals

There are so many layers of U.N. bureaucracy that it is easy for deadbeat bureaucrats, even criminals to hide. Scandal after U.N. criminal scandal gets quietly quashed by sending the accused home.

The U.N. police force’s direct involvement in the enslavement of East European women in Bosnian whorehouses is a prime example. David Lamb, a former Philadelphia police officer who served as a U.N. human rights investigator in Bosnia, said that he investigated allegations against Romanian, Fijian and Pakistani U.N. officers who recruited women, purchased false documents and then sold the women to Bosnian brothel owners. However Lamb said his investigating colleagues faced physical threats and were repeatedly stymied by their superiors at the U.N. The U.N.’s response was that the responsibility for prosecuting U.N. police officers belongs to their home countries, not the U.N. Really now? Why not send them to the International Criminal Court?

Before sending a mission abroad, the U.N. negotiates a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that, in almost all instances, deprives local authorities of criminal jurisdiction over peacekeepers. If there is no host-country government to negotiate with, as in East Timor or Kosovo, the countries providing peacekeepers and the U.N. determine the terms of the SOFA.

A “wall of silence” keeps sexual abuse cases from being investigated. Rapes are usually belittled as simple acts of prostitution. Sarah Martin, the author of the Haiti and Liberia report said: “They’d say, ‘Why should we ruin someone’s otherwise illustrious career over an act with a prostitute?’” She said Liberians had complained to her about some peacekeepers’ conduct with the comment, “This behavior would not be accepted in the home country of these soldiers; why are these soldiers playing around with our children?’

The very public charges of rape, pedophilia and prostitution involving U.N. peacekeepers in Burundi, Bosnia, Cambodia, Haiti, East Timor, Ethiopia, Liberia, Kosovo and Sierra Leone pale in comparison to those made in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that highlighted the arrogance of U.N. criminal bureaucrats. The 41-page report detailed 150 allegations of sexual misconduct by peacekeepers against women and girls, some as young as 12. That did not include the Congolese women working for the U.N. who were afraid to report supervisors’ demands for sex for fear of losing their jobs. More than a year after the shocking disclosures, nothing was done to end the culture of impunity, exploitation and sexual chauvinism. When U.N. peacekeepers who are sent to help restore stability, guarantee public security and instill the rule of law in countries ravaged by war rape the people they were sent to protect and coerce women and girls to trade sex for food, they defeat the purpose of their mission and exploit some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

It gets worse. The United Nations and Britain-based Save the Children charity said an investigation uncovered allegations of widespread sexual abuse of children by both agencies relief workers sent to West Africa to help young people buffeted by years of war. Investigations in refugee camps in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone in 2001 turned up accusations against 67 workers. It gives a whole new meaning to “relief workers.”