[NYTr] UN unit in Haiti linked to sexual abuse of girls

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Lynette Dumble - activ-l

Miami Herald - Dec 17, 2007
http://www.miamiherald.com/top_stories/story/347519.html


U.N. unit in Haiti linked to sex abuse of girls

The United Nations mission in Haiti expelled 114 Sri Lankan troops
accused of sexual exploitation in violation of U.N. ethical policies.

BY CAROL J. WILLIAMS
Los Angeles Times Service

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Girls as young as 13 were having sex with U.N.
peacekeepers for as little as $1.

Five young Haitian women who followed soldiers back to Sri Lanka were
forced into brothels or polygamous households. They have been rescued
and brought home to warn others of the dangers of foreign liaisons.

The young mother of a peacekeeper's child had to send the toddler to
live with relatives in the countryside after other children and
parents taunted him with the nickname ''Little Minustah,'' using the
French acronym for the United Nations mission here.

In the latest sex scandal to tarnish the world organization, at least
114 Sri Lankan troops have been expelled from the U.N. Stabilization
Mission in Haiti for sexual exploitation of Haitian women and girls.

This poorest country in the Western Hemisphere has endured repeated
occupation, each time suffering instances of statutory rape and
economically coerced sexual relations.

But this time, the troops had been sent to protect them. The United
Nations had taken measures to stop such abuse after revelations three
years ago that its troops in Congo were having sex with girls in
exchange for staples such as eggs and milk or token sums of money.

When the abuses in the Haitian capital's impoverished Martissant
neighborhood were brought to the mission's attention in August, a unit
of the self-policing U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services was
deployed to investigate. Its report to the U.N. Department of
Peacekeeping Operations in New York remains confidential, but mission
commanders repatriated 111 soldiers and three officers on disciplinary
grounds early last month.

MINUSTAH spokesman David Wimhurst said all violators of U.N. ethical
policies are swiftly punished.

''The rules are very strict and very clear. There's a zero-tolerance
policy,'' he said of the code of conduct that all of the nearly 9,000
U.N. soldiers, police and civilians deployed in Haiti must uphold.
``You can't have sex with anybody under 18 or with anybody in exchange
for money, services, promises or food.''

The internal U.N. action has inspired Haiti's fledgling feminist
organizations to demand reparations from Sri Lanka and an
investigation by Haitian authorities of suspected abuses among the
30-plus national contingents that make up MINUSTAH.

''The Sri Lankan case is the one we are hearing about now, but it's
not the only one,'' said Olga Benoit of Haitian Women's Solidarity,
recalling two Pakistani peacekeepers who were expelled two years ago
for raping a mentally ill woman in Gonaives and a French policeman
disciplined for keeping a prostitute captive. ``These are men,
soldiers in big vehicles, carrying weapons -- that has a lot of power
in a patriarchal society like ours.''

In a country where more than half of the 8.5 million people live on
less than a dollar a day, the parents and friends of girls engaging in
sex for food or other compensation ''tend to close their eyes and
pretend nothing is happening,'' Benoit said.

Young girls have congregated outside peacekeeping posts since the
first U.N. troops arrived in the summer of 2004, sometimes begging,
other times flirting or practicing a few words of English, French or
Spanish.

Magalie Marcelin of the Women's Home organization, which is working to
educate young Haitian women about their rights and the social risks
around them, attributes the MINUSTAH scandal to a history of Haitians
regarding women's bodies as commodities.

''That a soldier can do this to a girl he's supposed to be protecting
comes from the same mentality that allows a professor to do it to his
student or a father to his daughter,'' Marcelin said.

As with many nations contributing troops to U.N. peacekeeping
missions, the Sri Lankan government retains responsibility for
disciplinary action against its soldiers in Haiti.

Authorities in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, in consultation with
the commander of the 950-member Sri Lankan contingent, ordered the
repatriations and deployed a high-level investigative team, including
a female officer, to determine the extent of the abuses.

A spokeswoman for the Sri Lankan mission at the United Nations in New
York, Mahishini Colonne, said she didn't know when her government's
investigation would conclude.

She said reparations to Haitian victims were likely ``one aspect being
considered.''

Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, the Haitian minister of women's
affairs, said the abuses might be more widespread than reported.

The United Nations has not shared its findings with the Haitian
government.

Lassegue said such a move was a necessary first step for Haitians to
gather evidence to pursue reparations and dissuade further misconduct.