Lack of Accountability Allows Peacekeeper Sexual Abuse to Continue Running Rampant

While the United Nations peacekeepers were purportedly sent to Haiti to protect the people there, Haitians are not so sure. UN peacekeepers brought cholera to Haiti in 2010, for the first time recorded in the country’s history. UN peacekeepers have also been perpetrators of sexual abuse and exploitation of both women and children in Haiti and other countries around the world. The vast majority of the time, justice is not served for these abuses because it is left up to the home countries to prosecute the perpetrators. Rather than revealing these scandals and shaming the home countries into acting justly, the UN has kept the abuses under wraps, helping the culture of impunity to continue. U.S. ambassadors are now demanding that all nations who supply peacekeepers hold abusers accountable, or risk losing their agreements with the UN (and thus, their compensation). IJDH Staff Attorney Nicole Phillips is featured in this article.

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Analysis: What the UN Could’ve Done to Protect Vulnerable Haitians Against Sexually Abusive Peacekeepers

Tanasia Kenney, Atlanta Black Star

April 18, 2017

Following the overthrow of Haitian President Bertrand Aristide in February 2004, the United Nations deployed nearly 900 “peacekeepers” to the tiny island nation in hopes of stabilizing the area during a time of chaos, violence, covert international intervention and broken government.

Fast forward 13 years and those same peacekeepers, sent by the United Nations under the guise of protecting the world’s most vulnerable people, managed to do much more harm than good.

An investigation by the Associated Press, released Wednesday, April 12, uncovered disturbing details of a child sex ring run by Sri Lankan peacekeepers on the island for years, exploiting children as young as 12 for basic necessities like food, water and money.

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