UN peacekeepers, aid workers sexually molesting kids

UN peacekeepers, aid workers abusing kids

By EDITH LEDERER, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 32 minutes ago

UNITED NATIONS - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed "deep
concern" Tuesday after a leading children's charity said it uncovered
evidence of widespread sexual abuse of children at the hands of U.N.
peacekeepers and international aid workers.


The report by Save the Children UK, based on field research in
southern Sudan, Ivory Coast and Haiti, describes a litany of sexual
crimes against children as young as 6.

It said some children were denied food aid unless they granted sexual
favors; others were forced to have sex or to take part in child
pornography; many more were subjected to improper touching or kissing.

"The report shows sexual abuse has been widely underreported because
children are afraid to come forward," Jasmine Whitbread, chief
executive of Save the Children UK, told Associated Press Television
News.

"A tiny proportion of peacekeepers and aid workers are abusing the
children they were sent to protect. It ranges from sex for food to
coerced sex. It's despicable."

At the U.N. headquarters, spokeswoman Michele Montas said Ban "is
deeply concerned" by the report.

"We welcome this report. It's fair, and I think it's essentially
accurate," Montas said.

She noted the report states the United Nations has already undertaken
steps designed to tackle the problem, from establishing conduct and
discipline units in all U.N. missions to strengthening training for
all categories of U.N. personnel. She said the United Nations also
needs to strengthen its investigative capacity.

The study was based on research, confidential interviews and focus
groups conducted last year. The charity emphasized it did not produce
comprehensive statistics about the scale of abuse but did gather
enough information to indicate the problem is severe.

The report said that more than half the children interviewed knew of
cases of sexual abuse and that in many instances children knew of 10
or more such incidents carried out by aid workers or peacekeepers.

The Save the Children UK researchers, who met with 129 girls and 121
boys between the ages of 10 and 17, and also with a number of adults,
found an "overwhelming" majority of the people interviewed would never
report a case of abuse and had never heard of a case being reported.

The threat of retaliation, and the stigma attached to sex abuse, were
powerful deterrents to coming forward, the report said.

Ann Buchanan, an Oxford University expert in statistical attempts to
quantify rates of child abuse, said the topic is so taboo it is
virtually impossible to come up with reliable numbers. But she said
the new report provides a useful starting point.

"This will never be a statistical study," she said. "We'd call it a
pilot work exploring the start of an issue. All the research shows
kids don't make it up."

Buchanan, who directs the Oxford Center for Research into Parenting
and Children, said the biggest obstacle to accurate numerical studies
of child sexual abuse is the reluctance of children to come forward
and tell adults they have been taken advantage of.

"Sexual abuse is a hugely difficult, sensitive area and it's not
something that you can usually do surveys about because kids feel
terrible shame and are afraid to say what's happened to them," she
said. "Given what we know about underreporting of sex abuse, I would
say this report is probably true. They've gone about it as sensitively
as you can."

Save the Children spokesman Dominic Nutt said U.N. peacekeepers are
involved in many abuse cases because they are present throughout the
world in such large numbers. But he praised the United Nations for
improving its reporting and investigative procedures regarding sex
abuse.

"We're not singling out the U.N. In some ways they do a good job. It's
all peacekeepers and all aid workers, including Save the Children,"
that are involved in sexual abuses, he said.

The report says several Save the Children workers were fired for
having sex with 17-year-old girls in violation of agency guidelines.

In its report, Save the Children UK makes three key recommendations:
establish a way for people to report abuse locally, create an
international watchdog agency this year to deal with the problem, and
set up a program to deal with the underlying causes of child abuse.

Tom Cargill, Africa program manager at the London think tank Chatham
House, said there is no "magic bullet" that can solve the problem
quickly.

"The governance of U.N. missions has always been a problem because
soldiers from individual states are only beholden to those states," he
said. "So it's difficult for the U.N. to pursue charges and difficult
for the U.N. to investigate them."

___

Associated Press writer Gregory Katz in London contributed to this
report.
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