[APWW-Meet] Lacks Muscle to Fight Sex Abuse in Peacekeeping

[Roberto Savio <soros@other-net.info>]

Welcome to the APWW-Meet
An announcement list of the Asia Pacific Women Watch network
working for the advancement of the status of women.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

//Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited,
article sent for information purposes.//
Lacks Muscle to Fight Sex Abuse in Peacekeeping


By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 (IPS) - When the United Nations Security Council
adopted a key resolution last month critical of violence against women,
the condemnation was also directed at the increasing number of
peacekeepers, mostly soldiers, expelled from U.N. missions on charges of
rape or sexual abuse.

Since the United Nations has no political or legal authority to penalise
these offenders, complains one U.N. official, most of them escape
punishment for their criminal activities because national governments
have either refused or have been slow in meting out justice within their
own court systems.=20

The only thing the Secretariat could do is to deport them home, as was
the case with the 108 Sri Lankan peacekeepers serving with the U.N.
peacekeeping mission in Haiti (Minustah), who were accused of sexual
exploitation and sexual abuse of minors.=20

One of the expelled peacekeepers was quoted as saying, rather defiantly:
"What do you expect us to do when the U.N. is providing us with free
condoms?"=20

According to the U.N. Secretariat, there has been sexual abuse by
peacekeepers in virtually all of the U.N. missions overseas, including
the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Cote
d'Ivoire, Liberia and Haiti.=20

"The United Nations is not helpless when it comes to holding
peacekeepers accountable for sexual violence," says Jessica Neuwirth,
president of Equality Now, an international human rights organisation
based in New York.=20

In addition to repatriating peacekeepers, she said, the United Nations
can also work much more actively to ensure that governments hold
peacekeepers criminally accountable.=20

"Moreover, the United Nations should ensure that those who perpetrate
sexual violence are not allowed to serve in future peacekeeping
missions," she added.=20

"The world body could also make criminal accountability for criminal
behaviour a condition of U.N. peacekeeping service through waiver of
immunity so that peacekeepers could be tried in the countries where the
violations take place," Neuwirth told IPS.=20

Mavic Cabrera-Balleza of the International Women's Tribune Centre says
that U.N. peacekeepers are charged with the protection of civilians, but
they are not always told explicitly that this means stopping sexual
violence.=20

"And the demands on peacekeeping troops are so great that they may
ignore anything they are not asked explicitly to do. The Security
Council should provide clear mandates on this key issue," she adds.=20

Speaking at the Security Council meeting in mid-June, Rama Yade,
secretary of state for foreign affairs and human rights of France,
criticised the peacekeeping mission in DRC for being indifferent to
sexual abuse of women even by non-peacekeepers.=20

She said the U.N. Organisation Mission in DRC (MONUC) has the world's
largest contingent of peacekeepers totaling over 16,600 troops, and the
women in Congo are asking: "What good is that presence to us, when we
continue to be kidnapped and raped?"=20

"You see," Yade told delegates, "the 200,000 women who have been raped
in the DRC are expecting more concrete and timely results. They are
asking me to present their petition to you. We must therefore take
action. What can we do?"=20

The Security Council resolution, unanimously adopted on Jun 19, requests
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "to continue and strengthen efforts to
implement the policy of zero tolerance of sexual exploitation and abuse
in U.N. peacekeeping operations."=20

The resolution also urges member states providing troops and police
personnel "to take appropriate preventative action, including
pre-deployment and in-theatre awareness training, and other action to
ensure full accountability in cases of such conduct involving their
personnel."=20

Charlotte Bunch, executive director of the Center for Women's Global
Leadership at Rutgers University, said: "Yes I do think that the
Security Council resolution is another useful instrument in the effort
to get better documentation and prosecution of sexual abuse and violence
against women in conflict."=20

Until this resolution, she said, "we could infer that this issue was a
responsibility of the (15-member) Security Council, but some members of
the Council had not seen it as such and argued that there was not enough
evidence that this problem was of a magnitude that it should be on the
Council's agenda, and was not a threat to international peace and
security."=20

"Now it is indisputably on that agenda and the onus is on the
secretary-general to ensure that better information is gathered on this
issue in the field," Bunch told IPS.=20

This of course, she pointed out, will require the investment of more
resources and staff training to do so.=20

The real test for the secretary-general is how he will follow up on his
commitment to strengthen U.N. efforts to combat violence against women,
as he announced in launching his campaign at the meeting of the
Commission on the Status of Women in March.=20

"In working to implement this resolution, U.N. agencies and peacekeeping
missions must be mandated to provide more information and to use their
resources to do so," Bunch added.=20

Neuwirth of Equality Now said the United Nations could also do more to
prevent these violations, and it would certainly help to have more women
peacekeepers, especially in command-level positions of authority.=20

The other issue, she added, is "how can the U.N. create more pressure on
national governments to prosecute peacekeepers who are deported for
their abuse of women?"=20

As for accountability, Bunch said it is also critical to make certain
that such sexual abuses are included in prosecutions of the
International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.=20

"It would also be important for the U.N. to make national prosecution of
peacekeepers charged with these abuses one of the criteria on which
states were chosen to provide peacekeeping troops," she said.=20

For many countries, she pointed out, U.N. peacekeeping is a key part of
the maintenance and training of their military forces. Therefore, if
this were seen to be a determining factor in whether they would be
chosen to provide forces, it would add more pressure on them to do so.=20

Also standards could be developed for how best to train troops in the
appropriate treatment of women and sexual violence can be part of the
criteria for troops' relationships to the community.=20

Overall, efforts in this direction have begun and additional pressure
from the top, such as this Security Council resolution, can add momentum
to the process.=20

"But they can only do so if there is an ongoing commitment to addressing
this issue and recognition that it requires continual attention and
resources, not just good rhetoric," Bunch declared. (END/2008)=20


 ________________________________________________________________

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The APWW-Meet is a moderated list hosted by Isis International-Manila for
the APWW network. To unsubscribe, send an email to majordomo@isiswomen.org
and put the line "unsubscribe apww-meet" in the message body. To post
messages, send to apww-meet@isiswomen.org. For inquiries, send to
owner-apww-meet@isiswomen.org.