February 10, 2005
UN Bans Peacekeepers from Sex with Congolese
By REUTERS


Filed at 0:07 a.m. ET
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. peacekeepers have been banned from having sex with the local population in Congo following allegations of widespread abuse of women and girls, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan disclosed the new ``non-fraternization'' regulations in a letter to the Security Council in which he called for 100 extra police and French-speaking investigators to ``root out'' the abuse and prevent further sexual exploitation.
Over the past year the United Nations has probed 150 allegations against some 50 soldiers of sexual exploitation of women and girls, including gang rapes.
Children as young as 12 or 13 were bribed with eggs, milk or a few dollars in exchange for sex, U.N. reports said.
The new measures were put into place last week by U.S. diplomat William Swing, head of the U.N. Mission in Democratic Republic of the Congo, known by its French acronym of MONUC, which has some 13,000 military and civilian staff.
The new rules would apply only to Congo, which has the largest of the 16 U.N. peacekeeping missions around the world, U.N. spokesman Ari Gaitanis said.
U.N. regulations for soldiers usually forbid sex with anyone under 18 years of age and forced prostitution. But often officials found there was a fine line between forced and willing sex.
Annan listed the new measures as ``establishment of a non-fraternization policy, installation of a curfew for military contingents'' as well as specialized training and recreation facilities ``to alleviate the concentrated stress present in field missions.''
Gaitanis said the ``non-fraternization'' policy applied only to the military but ``there is a possibility it may be extended to civilian personnel as well.''
U.N. officials acknowledged that enforcement would be difficult but said they believed the strict policy would eliminate many abuses.
Annan vowed that the ``entire chain of command'' would be held accountable for enforcing a ``zero-tolerance'' standard.
The United Nations has little recourse against sent as peacekeepers by individual nations except to send them home and insist their country of origin take action. Annan said some 20 cases against military personnel been substantiated.
So far the only known prosecution has been by South Africa against two of its soldiers. Among civilians, France jailed a U.N. staff member on charges of rape and making pornographic videos of children.
Allegations have also been made against soldiers from Uruguay, Morocco, Tunisia and Nepal.
In his six-page letter to the council, Annan recalled that he had expressed ``my personal outrage.''
``I reiterate my stance -- one which I know the members of the council share -- that we cannot tolerate even one instance of a United Nations peacekeeper victimizing the most vulnerable among us,'' he said.
Annan noted that the United Nations had sent Angela Kane, an assistant secretary-general, for further investigations and to develop a ``sustainable response.'' Her efforts in the short term would result in a likely increase rather than a decrease in the allegations, he said.
Despite the probes and programs, the U.N. watchdog agency reported last month that the abuse was continuing.
The report in January on the peacekeepers came from the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services and concentrated on Bunia, in the eastern part of the vast central African nation where fighting was intense last year.
Charges of abuses among peacekeepers are not new. Canada and Italy, for example, disclosed more than a decade ago that their soldiers had tortured Somalis.
But media reports, especially during the Bosnian war in the 1990s on sex abuse, have multiplied and now U.N. officials speak about them openly.