I regularly review the United Nation's own website just to get a feel for what's going on and I was utterly shocked that Kofi Annan, the Secretary General, has now openly
admitted the atrocities going on in the Congo. His spokesperson read out a statement last Friday:
I have had a detailed briefing here in Dar es Salaam from my Special Representative for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, about the investigations which the UN initiated some time ago into allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by both civilian and military peacekeeping personnel in the DRC. I am afraid there is clear evidence that acts of gross misconduct have taken place. This is a shameful thing for the United Nations to have to say, and I am absolutely outraged by it.
The UN
article on the subject doesn't go into much detail either. What is Mr. Annan referring to?
The UN mission in the Congo (formerly Zaire) is called MONUC. And certain MONUC "peacekeeper" soldiers, wearing the blue UN helmet, have been raping refugees. I had heard whispers about this story but since the Congo is one of the wildest and most remote corners of the planet, I wasn't sure what to believe. Now it seems Annan has admitted it's true.
The British newspaper Independent had a story on this back in May 2004. It's now only available to subscribers so I'll quote it in its entirety:
Teenage rape victims fleeing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being sexually exploited by the United Nations peace-keeping troops sent to the stop their suffering.
The Independent has found that mothers as young as 13 - the victims of multiple rape by militiamen - can only secure enough food to survive in the sprawling refugee camp by routinely sleeping with UN peace-keepers.
Testimony from girls and aid workers in the Internally Displaced People (IDP) camp in Bunia, in the north-east corner of Congo, claims that every night teenage girls crawl through a wire fence to an adjoining UN compound to sell their bodies to Moroccan and Uruguayan soldiers.
The trade, which according to one victim results in a banana or a cake to feed to her infant son, is taking place despite a pledge by the UN to adopt a "zero tolerance" attitude to cases of sexual misconduct by those representing the organisation.
One girl, Faela, 13, whose son, Joseph, is not yet six months old, has described how the social stigma of her fatherless child, the result of repeated rape by militiamen in her village, mean she is treated like a pariah in the chaotic and violent Bunia camp, which is home to 15,000 people.
She said: "It is hard in the camp for the girls like me with little babies and no husbands. We have no men to look after us. We have been dirtied by the soldiers who came to our villages. No one will take us as their wives and it is hard to get food in the camp for us."
She added: "It is easy for us to get to the UN soldiers. We climb through the fence when it is dark, sometimes once a night, sometimes more."
During a five-day period, The Independent spoke to more than 30 girls, half of whom said they made the 20-metre journey from the camp to gaps in the wire fences of the compound run by Monuc, the UN mission in Congo.
One worker, employed by Atlas, the aid group that manages the camp, confirmed that staff were aware of the trade in sex but were too frightened to tackle it.
He said: "There is nothing to stop them and the girls need food. It is best to keep quiet, though. I am frightened that if I say something I may lose my job and I have children of my own to feed."
The UN has announced its own inquiry into the allegations, warning that it will apply "all available sanctions" against those responsible. But doubts remain about the effectiveness of the investigation and the ability of the UN to bring those responsible to justice.
Dominique McAdams, the head of the UN in Bunia, said she believed that there was sexual violence in the camp, but said she had yet to see any evidence.
You can read more about Faela's story here.
The MONUC soldiers involved in this atrocity have not been named by the UN but I have heard they were from Morocco, South Africa, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Tunisia and Uruguay. A second Independent article states that as many as 50 women and children may have been raped in the Bunia refugee camp alone.
Ms. McAdams, to her credit, asked some of the MONUC soldiers accused or rape to be transferred but her requests were denied by her UN superiors. More horrific details:
The Congolese head of the NGO, which runs the shelter where Anna now lives, admitted that she hears similar stories on a daily basis. She declined to give her name, but says: "We have had many cases of young girls coming here who have been raped by Monuc soldiers - mainly Indian and South African. Often the soldiers encourage the girls to go near them by offering them sweets and biscuits. Then they rape them. Most girls and their families are too scared to speak out because the UN soldiers have guns. Many people see them as being like the local armies and are scared of them."
Most MONUC soldiers served a six month stint or less, making investigation into their activities difficult. Many writers, especially of the "tin foil hat" variety, felt that none of them would ever be properly investigated but Mr. Annan's statement on Friday seems to bely that. Clearly however it took the UN more than six months to investigate these cases, indirectly contributing further to the atrocity.
Unfortunately, once a soldier is no longer employed by the UN, the United Nations has no authority to charge him with a crime or imprison him. That's left to his native country to do and so far I've seen no evidence that this will happen. A South African colonel stationed in Goma was found "guilty" by a UN investigation of raping teenage boys but he was never charged with a crime once he returned to South Africa.
Estimates range as high as three million human beings killed during the ongoing warfare in the Congo. After World War 2, the Congolese conflicts stands as the deadliest war of the twentieth century. Children have not only been raped by armed groups in the area but have also been drafted and forced to serve as soldiers. And now the one group sent to protect them, the United Nations in their light blue helmets, have taken advantage of these poor people even further.
UNMOC took over patrolling the eastern Congo in June 2003 from a French-led European Union contingent. From the AFP in December 2003:
The redeployment of a UN peacekeeping force with a broadened mandate in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has failed to inspire confidence among residents, who feel the blue helmets have let them down in the past.
"We don't really trust MONUC," said a local aid worker in the flashpoint town of Bunia, referring to the UN Observer Mission for Congo. "So far, we've been disappointed."
Bunia is the capital of the DRC's northeastern Ituri province, the scene of bitter inter-ethnic fighting that has claimed tens of thousands of lives in the past four years.
"We are worried, because we're still in a war zone," added the man, who asked not to be named.
The UN force formally took over from a French-led EU force that deployed in Bunia in June under a UN mandate that restricted them to the town and allowed them to open fire only in self-defence.
The French peacekeepers' zero-tolerance policy on residents carrying weapons largely made the town safe, but residents say that is not enough.
"In the neighbouring areas there are ambushes at night. They abduct people, steal and sometimes rape," the aid worker says. "I would have preferred the French to stay. At least they had proved themselves."
The local aid worker was unfortunately more prescient than she knew.
Let's hope the names of these offenders are made public so that further incidents of this type will never happen again. The soldiers who used food to lure women and children into being raped are, in my opinion, guilty of a war crime and should be tried as such in their home country.
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