Disturbing The Peace: UN Peacekeepers and Sexual Abuse (Part 3: Echoes of Despair)

By Devon Bowers

This is part three of a multi-part series. Read Part One here. Read Part Two here.

Author’s Note: This article and series focuses on sexual abuse and assault, with some graphic descriptions of such acts. Reader discretion is advised.

From the tail end of the 20th century and into the new millennium, United Nations have deployed all over the world, to war torn, strife ridden nations with the goal of lessening the violence so peaceful, political solutions could be pursued. Yet, from the very first deployment, UN forces have engaged in heinous, stomach-churning acts of degeneracy which primarily young girls and women have been abused and raped. The situation was actively made worse by the UN itself as it left victims with no recourse and in several instances actively worked to obscure the fact that any abuse had taken place at all.

The events from 1991 in Cambodia, twisting and turning in places such as Bosnia, East Timor, and Haiti, still cast a shadow over UN operations even today.

South Sudan

In 2011, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1996, under which UN forces would be deployed in order to aid in the creation of a peaceful environment so that the new nation would be able to begin to establish itself politically and economically. Another resolution, Resolution 2155, was later adopted as a coup attempt threw the nation into ethnic strife,[1] with UN troops being tasked with protecting civilian, monitoring human rights violations, and creating safe conditions so humanitarian aid could be delivered.[2]

Early on there were notes made of the difficulties UNMISS was facing regarding training on sexual abuse. A 2013 independent study noted that there were “significant gaps in the induction and refresher training”[3] that occurred between missions, with some not ever receiving the training at all, primarily due to lack of and imperfect communication between the Conduct and Discipline Team and the Integrated Mission Training Center on a local level, whose duty it was to provide said training.

Commanders also proved to be a problem as some of them pushed back against the zero-tolerance policy, choosing to zero in on the “aggressive behavior of women who solicit their troops”[4] instead of the conduct of the soldiers themselves and even requested ‘flexibility’ on the issue of prostitution, despite it being in direct violation of the zero-tolerance rule.

What made the situation worse, as well, was the lack of UN peacekeepers actually conducting their duties. The Star reported in July 2016 that South Sudanese government soldiers had raped dozens of women outside a UN camp and that there was a “reluctance by UN peacekeepers to protect civilians. At least one assault occurred as peacekeepers watched.

On July 17, two armed soldiers in uniform dragged away a woman who was less than a few hundred meters from the UN camp’s western gate while armed peacekeepers on foot, in an armored vehicle and in a watchtower looked on. One witness estimated that 30 peacekeepers from Nepalese and Chinese battalions saw the incident. “They were seeing it. Everyone was seeing it,” he said. “The woman was seriously screaming, quarrelling and crying also, but there was no help. She was crying for help.”[5]

While the peacekeepers themselves weren’t engaging in abuse, it could be argued that they abetted the situation by standing by and doing nothing. This also potentially brings up the question: How often were peacekeepers shirking their duties to the point that national soldiers felt bold enough to rape women near UN camps, much less in front of them?

The following year it seemed that the situation was changing in that the UN was taking a firm stance regarding UNMISS soldiers, stating that there would “be no second chances” for any UN personnel found guilty of sexual abuse and preventing and responding to such cases were a “top priority.”[6] Yet this stance eventually wavered as in the following years. In 2018, Nepalese peacekeepers faced allegation of raping a South Sudanese child. In all, a UN commission investigated sexual abuse allegations by UNMISS soldiers, with 18 peacekeepers being registered in the UN Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Database.[7]

The UN remains in South Sudan to this day.

Mali

In the context of the fourth Tuareg rebellion in Mali[8], UN troops were dispatched to deal with the ongoing violence there beginning in April 2013. While there wasn’t much reporting on the actions of UN peacekeepers in Mali, unfortunately abuse did still take place.

Only months after the mission began did abuse begin to be reported on. BBC reported in September 2013 that four UN peacekeepers were accused of sexually assaulting a Malian woman, with several Malians alleging that multiple women were raped, yet due to the soldiers being from Chad, the UN urged the Chadian government to investigate and discipline the men.[9] The organization was already dropping the ball arguably as it was known for quite some time that nations rarely if ever hold their soldiers accountable.

Central African Republic

In 2014 the UN had taken over operations in the Central African Republic from the African Union[10] force in a country that was dealing with an active civil war.[11]

By 2015, problems were already starting. There was a case here two girls under 16 said they had been forced to exchange sex for food, starting back in 2014.[12] Several months later it was revealed that during a house search, a UN peacekeeper dragged the girl out of the bathroom she was hiding in and raped her.[13]

Sangaris Forces

The Guardian had reported that six pre-teen children told UN staff that they had been sexually abused in exchange food from December 2013 to June 2014 by French soldiers.[14] However, this was a situation where the French troops weren’t under UN control, yet they knew that such acts were ongoing. It was taken so seriously that the Secretary-General even went so far as to set up an independent panel to probe the matter.[15]

The panel was headed by Marie Deschamps, a former Justice on the Canadian Supreme Court, Hassan B. Jallow, a former Minister of Justice and Attorney General in Gambia, and Yasmin Sooka, who had been on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and a member of the United Nations Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka to investigate war crimes in the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War.

The abuse was committed by French soldiers, known as the Sangaris Forces for “Operation Sangaris,” not by soldiers under the UN’s command.  Still, the organization’s human rights mandate required them to “carry out the interrelated obligations of investigating the allegations; reporting on the allegations internally and, where appropriate, publicly; and following up on the allegations to prevent further abuses and to ensure that perpetrators are held accountable.”[16] The UN had a legal framework in which action could be taken.

A total of six discussions were conducted in which victims of sexual abuse were interviewed. Like so many other soldiers, the French would generally lure victims in with food, with one 9-year-old interviewee saying that

a French soldier working at the check point called him, gave him an individual combat food ration and showed him a pornographic video on his cell phone. The child stated that the soldier then opened his trousers, showing him his erect penis, and asked him to suck his “bangala” (penis). The child told the [Human Rights Officer] that they were seen by another child, who alerted some local delinquents. As a mob was forming, the soldier told the child to run away but the child was caught and beaten. [17]

On several levels, there was a failure of leadership on the part of the UN as they didn’t conduct any further investigation beyond initial interviews and in fact, UN officials assumed that due to the Sangaris forces not being under UN command, the UN “had a limited obligation to respond” to these allegations and because the situation was “politically sensitive” [18] there should be no further exposure than necessary.

In May 2014, the Human Rights and Justice Section (HRJS) was asked by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to compile a report on African Union soldiers that were supposed to be put under UN control, as many such individuals had been previously accused of serious human rights violations. In this report HRJS also included information of the actions of the Sangaris Forces. Such information should have triggered an emergency report, however, HRJS encouraged the Special Representative of the Secretary-General not divulge the situation. Worse, the HRJS “took no further steps to intervene to stop the violations or to hold the perpetrators accountable.”[19] (emphasis added) So the Section knew that children were being raped and yet did nothing to stop it, effectively becoming complicit in what occurred.

Later, near the end of June 2014, the Human Rights Officer submitted the Sangaris Notes to the head of the HRJS, which, rather than preparing a report and then sending it up to the Special Representative or the High Commissioner’s Office, muddied the waters by putting the information “in a broader report that included a number of allegations of serious human rights abuses—such as killings and torture—by other international troops.”[20] In addition to this, the July 2014 draft report was never finalized or submitted, with the head of HRJS arguing that the Sangrais Notes had already been handed over to the French government, thus there was no further need for involvement.

The Panel

[inferred] from this decision that the purpose of preparing the 17 July 2014 report was to disguise the Allegations so that France was not singled out, and to generate as little attention as possible on the abuses. Unfortunately, this strategy was effective and the report, including the Allegations they contained, went largely ignored. […] The decision of the head of HRJS not to finalize the 17 July 2014 report was a failure of his obligation to follow up not only on the Allegations described in the Sangaris Notes, but also on the other violations of human rights and international criminal law set out in the draft report.[21]

The Central African Republic desk also failed in its duties as between May and June 2014, they received at least five notifications of the allegations against the French, but “took no further steps either to follow up with HRJS or with the [Special Representative for the Secretary-General]”[22] beyond vague wording in a human rights development update.

After the Human Rights Officer took her leave, the HRJS halted the investigation and UNICEF didn’t seek out any additional children despite that four of the children interviewed identified other victims, the children acknowledging that it was public information that French troops would trade sex for food, and indications from the interviews that the abuse was planned and coordinated, among several other flags that should have been cause for alarm. This helps to illuminate the fact that even if serious reforms were made, it doesn’t matter if there is failure at the local level to report on such abuse.

Thankfully, there was a whistleblower in the form of Anders Kompass who leaked “a confidential report documenting the sexual abuse of children by French and African peacekeepers”[23] to the French government. In response, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Raad al-Hussein of Jordan, asked the Office of Internal Oversight Services to “open an investigation into the matter on the grounds that Kompass ‘had placed the victims of sexual abuse at risk by including their names in the report he provided to the French government’ and that he did so in order to obtain a promotion.”[24] While he was suspended for a time, Kompass was later reinstated.

The French ended their mission in the CAR in October 2016.[25] The following year, the French court system refused to bring charges against the soldiers accused of sexually abusing children, with spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office, Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre, saying that “the case was particularly difficult because it was based solely on the children’s accounts, without independent evidence” and that there was the problem of identifying people.[26]

Worse, though, was that more evidence of abuse would be uncovered. In March 2016, the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General and a delegation from MINUSCA met with local leaders, where four girls accused the Sangaris force of forcing them to have sex with a dog.

[They] were tied up and undressed inside a camp by a military commander from the Sangaris force and forced to have sex with a dog. Each girl was then given 5000 Central African Francs (approx. $9 USD). The three girls interviewed sought basic medical treatment. The fourth girl later died of an unknown disease. One of the survivors said that she was called “the Sangaris’ dog” by people in the community.[27]

The UN never contested the claims.[28]

There was a separate case that had similarities to UN abuse in the Ivory Coast, where it was found that peacekeepers were paying girls “as little as 50 cents in exchange for sex” and that there was an entire prostitution ring these peacekeepers utilized that “was run by boys and young men who offered up girls ‘for anywhere from 50 cents to three dollars.”[29] Once again, there is the utilization of children as tools to abuse other children.

In early 2016, Human Rights Watch documented a total of eight sexual abuse cases. One of the cases was a gang rape, where a woman was visiting a Republic of Congo troop base, seeking assistance when armed peacekeepers forced her into a bush a raped her. “I didn’t want to have sex with them, but when I went to visit their base, they took me into the bush,” she said. “There were three of them on me. They were armed. They said if I resisted, they would kill me. They took me one by one.”[30] Another involved a 14 year old girl, who was attacked as she was walking by a UN base. She told HRW that the peacekeepers “pulled me into the tall grass and one held my arms while the other one pinned down my legs and raped me.”[31] She began to scream, causing both soldiers to run away before she could be raped a second time.

As time wore on, more abuses from the past came to light,[32] however, the biggest shock came in 2017, revolving around an entire battalion.

The issue involved about 650 Congolese soldiers whose “alleged indiscipline, poor leadership, repeated involvement in sexual exploitation and abuse cases, and overall threadbare competence”[33] was creating major headaches for the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. The UN mission filed an official assessment of the unit, known as COGBAT 3, which found that 120 personnel from CONGO Batt 2 and 1 from CONGO Batt 3 were repatriated to [their] home country on SEA cases.”[34] In a memo to the UN peacekeeping military advisor, Lieutenant General Carlos Humberto Loitey, the force commander of the mission, LTG Balla Kieta, lamented that “the situation has deteriorated to the point that the battalion is no longer trustable because of poor leadership, lack of discipline, and operational deficiencies.”[35] Despite having discipline break down in an entire battalion to the point that it was being discussed at the highest levels, not to mention the effect it was having on the local populace, all that came of it was that the UN had shared the evaluation with the Congolese government and the situation was being followed up on.

Bombshells continued to drop with the Code Blue campaign accusing the UN of mishandling sexual abuse cases, based on leaked case files which revealed that out of 14 cases that the UN was investigated in 2016, there were eight such cases in which the victims weren’t even interviewed, which could have resulted in cases being thrown out before they were thoroughly investigated.[36] In that same vein, when the UN dispatched investigators to look into rapes and sexual abuse done by Burundian and Gabonese peacekeepers, more than half of the 130 allegations would end up being dismissed. An internal UN report was uncovered in 2019 which found a laundry list of problems with the investigations, “– from the Burundians discrediting their testimony to the UN failing to ask crucial follow-up questions that could have corroborated their accounts.” More specifically the report found that:

• UNICEF failed to take accurate victim testimonies and waited weeks before informing the UN’s investigatory and oversight body of the allegations.

• The UN failed to provide basic security for investigators.

• The atmosphere for women and girls making the allegations was described as “threatening”, with one investigator reportedly asking a woman about her alleged perpetrator: “Did you love him?”

• The system of DNA collection and storage allowed samples to decay – specimens that could have identified alleged perpetrators.[37]

To make matters worse, Ben Swanson, the OIOS director who ordered and oversaw the report, attempted to sway The New Humanitarian from publishing an article on the matter saying that it was a draft report, it was “potentially damaging as written,” and even had the gall to argue that the results of the investigations were “quite good”[38] while utterly failing to discuss why most cases were dismissed or why so many cases involving Gabon soldiers were pending four years later.

There were major structural problems with the investigation, the largest one being that the Burundians were allowed to conduct them, a massive conflict of interest, which led them to be “more concerned with discrediting witnesses than taking their testimonies,” with interviews being described as “interrogatory” and involving “questions and comments described as “humiliating,” “irrelevant,” and “incongruous.”[39] Due to the lack of concern with the investigators, they failed to ask crucial follow-up questions which would have led to greater information awareness and a more detailed investigation, it resulted in a Burundian peacekeeper who had allegedly raped a women being cleared. The interviews were so plagued with problems that “they would have serious implications for any subsequent legal proceedings.”[40]

In spite all of this, the United Nations remains in the Central African Republic to this day.

Solutions?

Among all of this discussion, what has yet to be addressed is the idea of solutions. Though it would be easy to point to the UN and simply argue that the organization as a whole simply need to actually enforce its own rules, something that does need to occur, there needs to be an examination as to why it is so difficult to bring peacekeepers to justice and how victims can be taken care of.

First, what should be examined is the specifics of soldiers that are under UN command. Peacekeeping troops are loaned to the UN from troop-contributing countries and while they serve under UN command, their home countries are responsible for disciplining them based on a Memorandum of Agreement between the two entities. From there, the UN organizes a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the government of the country the soldiers are to be deployed to where the host nation “waives jurisdiction over peacekeepers for violations of host-nation law,” this results in a situation where troops have “de facto immunity from prosecution there.”[41] On paper, soldiers have immunity when working in an official capacity, but in reality, they are immune from local law.

TCCs refuse to exercise their legal authority and thus many peacekeepers commit horrid acts and go about their way. Even when TCCs do want to prosecute their soldiers, investigations are done so poorly and conducted in such a manner that doesn’t apply to their respective law, with evidence be inadmissible in court or so lacking that it wouldn’t sustain a conviction, that the case can easily be thrown out.[42]

It should be noted that the application of immunity can be waived. Within the SOFAs lie a clause which expounds upon the privileges and immunities for peacekeepers, with the general rule being that “basic privileges and immunities of a [UN] peacekeeping operation flow from the Convention of the Privileges and Immunities of the [UN],”[43] with the Convention specifying that such immunity only applies when soldiers are acting in official capacities.

For example, the SOFA dealing with the UN Mission in East Timor granted military personnel “immunity from Indonesian criminal and civil jurisdiction, and local criminal and civil jurisdiction,” however, due to the operation being considered an organ of the UN, peacekeepers fell “under the Convention on Privileges and Immunities, which means that immunities should still be able to be waived by the Secretary-General for any offences committed.”[44]

Thus, if peacekeepers do engage in crimes such as rape, forced prostitution, sexual abuse, and the like, the UN can actually waive that immunity due to such actions being outside of official duties. Therefore, there should be pressure on the UN to utilize its power to waive the immunity of peacekeepers accused of sexual abuse.

So, the question arises: If a peacekeeper can’t be punished by the laws of their respective country, can they be punished by international law?

Generally speaking, the International Criminal Court (ICC), deals with crimes that occur before and during conflicts, so for UN peacekeepers to be brought up on charges for sexual abuse by the ICC would not only be “a historic exercise of judicial authority,”[45] but also would send a message globally that peacekeepers engaging in sexual abuse would be bought to justice.

Renee Vezina, of the Ave Maria School of Law argues that there is some merit to this idea as the Rome Statute focuses on human rights violations or crimes against humanity, “which includes rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity.”[46] This legal standing was already around since 1998 with “prosecution of individuals at the international level on the crime of rape” in the “International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, when Jean Paul Akayesu was convicted for crimes against humanity for his encouragement of the rape of Tutsi women,”[47] which was upheld in the Appeals Chamber.

There are some serious challenges to use of the ICC, however. Its statute gives it jurisdiction on crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes, yet, each of these has its own definition that would limit the prosecutor’s options. Take the aforementioned idea of charging accused UN peacekeepers with crimes against humanity. That term “involves the commission of an attack that is inhumane in nature, causing great suffering, or serious injury to body, or to mental or physical health. The act must be committed as part of a widespread [“an attack directed against a multiplicity of victims”] or systematic attack [an attack carried out pursuant to a preconceived policy or plan”] against members of a civilian population.”[48] A second limitation is that the specific act “must be carried out ‘pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack,”[49] meaning that the crimes engaged in must be done in pursuit of a large policy.

Furthermore, the ICC acts in a complementary nature to national courts, only taking jurisdiction of cases if national courts don’t do so first or if they are unwilling/unable to prosecute, due to a breakdown in its judicial system, for example. To this end, Article 18 of the Rome Statute requires that the prosecutor of the ICC must notify all states parties and states with jurisdiction over the case before beginning an ICC investigation and cannot begin an investigation on his own initiative without first receiving the approval of a chamber of three judges.

At this stage, it would be open to states that are party to the statute to insist that they will investigate allegations against their own nationals themselves. Should this national be a peacekeeper (for example a South African peacekeeper alleged to be guilty of an ICC crime in the DRC), in such a situation the ICC must then suspend its investigation.[50]

Thus, the Court’s hands are tied if the court of troop contributing nations decided to take up the case, even if that national court lets the alleged abuser off the hook.

There may be a way of balancing the powers of a national court with the powers of the ICC in the form of a hybrid court, a court that can prosecute international crimes. A hybrid court is such because “both the institutional apparatus and the applicable law consist of a blend of the international and the domestic,” with foreign and domestic judges sitting side by side with cases being “prosecuted and defended by teams of local lawyers working with those from other countries.”[51] Such a system was used to some effect in Kosovo and in East Timor.[52]

With regards to addressing the pain of victims, there is the idea of a truth and reconciliation commission, which “have been used in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, and parts of Africa” and are focused primarily on “the right to truth and a victim-centered approach.”[53] This isn’t enough to address the abuses of UN peacekeepers, but it would provide a start where information could be brough to light, accountability has the potential to take place, and victims can confront their abusers in the open.

These ideas won’t solve the past outright, but it could change future UN peacekeeping operations. May be the echoes of despair would finally cease.

Notes

[1] Sudarsan Raghavan, “Divisions in South Sudan’s liberation movement fuel war,” Washington Post, December 27, 2013 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/divisions-in-south-sudans-liberation-movement-fuel-war/2013/12/27/71347da2-6f31-11e3-a5d0-6f31cd74f760_story.html)

[2] United Nations, Security Council, Resolution 2155, S/Res/2155, March 27, 2014 (https://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/2155(2014))

[3] Thelma Awori, Catherine Lutz, Paban J. Thapa, Final Report: Expert Mission to Evaluate Risks to SEA Prevention Efforts  in MINUSTAH, UNMIL, MONUSCO, and UNMISS, https://web.archive.org/web/20150709034934/http://www.aidsfreeworld.org/Newsroom/Press-Releases/2015/~/media/Files/Peacekeeping/2013%20Expert%20Team%20Report%20FINAL.pdf (November 3, 2013), pg 8

[4] Ibid, pg 18

[5] Jason Pantikin, “Dozens of women raped by South Sudan soldiers near UN camp: witnesses,” The Star, July 27, 2016 (https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/07/27/dozens-of-women-raped-by-south-sudan-soldiers-near-un-camp-witnesses.html)

[6] United Nations Permanent Mission, UNMISS: 'No second chances' for sexual exploitation and abuse, https://www.un.int/news/unmiss-no-second-chances-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse (October 3, 2017)

[7] UN News, South Sudan: ‘Outraged’ UN experts say ongoing widespread human rights violations may amount to war crimes, February 20, 2019 (https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/02/1033181)

[8] Devon Bowers, Rebellion, Resources, and Refugees: The Conflict in Mali, http://www.whataboutpeace.com/2013/02/rebellion-resources-and-refugees.html (February 28, 2013)

[9] BBC, UN's Minusma troops 'sexually assaulted Mali woman', https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-24272839 (September 26, 2013)

[10] David Smith, “UN takes over peacekeeping in Central African Republic,” The Guardian, September 16, 2014 (https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/sep/16/un-peacekeeping-central-african-republic)

[11] Thierry Vircoulon, Failure Has Many Fathers: The Coup in Central African Republic, Relief Web, https://reliefweb.int/report/central-african-republic/failure-has-many-fathers-coup-central-african-republic (March 28, 2013)

[12] France 24, UN peacekeepers accused in new child sex abuse claims, June 24, 2015 (https://www.france24.com/en/20150624-un-peacekeepers-accused-new-child-sex-abuse-claims-car)

[13] Amnesty International, CAR: UN troops implicated in rape of girl and indiscriminate killings must be investigated, August 11, 2015 (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/08/car-un-troops-implicated-in-rape-of-girl-and-indiscriminate-killings-must-be-investigated/)

[14] France 24, UN to probe ‘disturbing’ handling of CAR child sex abuse claims, June 6, 2015 (https://www.france24.com/en/20150603-un-independent%20-investigation-child-sex-abuse-car-peacekeepers-france)

[15] United Nations Secretary-General, Statement Attributable to the Secretary-General on allegations of sexual abuse in the Central African Republic, https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2015-06-03/statement-attributable-secretary-general-allegations-sexual-abuse (June 3, 2015)

[16] Marie Deschamps, Hassan B. Jallow, Yasmin Sooka, Taking Action on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Peacekeepers: Report of an Independent Review on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by International Peacekeeping Forces in the Central African Republic, https://web.archive.org/web/20151217183752/https://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/centafricrepub/Independent-Review-Report.pdf (December 17, 2015), pg 28

[17] Ibid, pg 17

[18] Ibid, pg 28

[19] Ibid, pg 33

[20] Ibid, pg 34

[21] Ibid, pg 35

[22] Ibid

[23] Colum Lynch, The U.N. Official Who Blew the Lid off Central African Republic Sex Scandal Vindicated, Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/17/the-u-n-official-who-blew-the-lid-on-central-african-republic-sex-scandal-vindicated/ (December 17, 2015)

[24] Government Accountability Project, Foreign Policy: UN Drops Leak Investigation Into Human Rights Official In C.A.R. Sex Scandal, https://whistleblower.org/in-the-news/foreign-policy-un-drops-leak-investigation-human-rights-official-car-sex-scandal/ (January 19, 2016)

[25] BBC, France ends Sangaris military operation in CAR, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37823047 (October 31, 2016)

[26] Benoît Morenne, “No Charges in Sexual Abuse Case Involving French Peacekeepers,” New York Times, January 6, 2017 (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/world/africa/french-peacekeepers-un-sexual-abuse-case-central-african-republic.html)

[27] Code Blue, Shocking New Reports of Peacekeeper Sexual Abuse in the Central African Republic, March 30, 2016 (http://www.codebluecampaign.com/press-releases/2016/3/30)

[28] Samuel Oakford, “French Peacekeepers Allegedly Tied Up Girls and Forced Them Into Bestiality,” Vice, March 31, 2016 (https://www.vice.com/en/article/a398za/french-peacekeepers-allegedly-tied-up-girls-and-forced-them-to-have-sex-with-dogs)

[29] Kevin Sieff, “U.N. says some of its peacekeepers were paying 13-year-olds for sex,” Washington Post, January 11, 2016 (https://web.archive.org/web/20160112032806/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/un-says-some-of-its-peacekeepers-were-paying-13-year-olds-for-sex/2016/01/11/504e48a8-b493-11e5-8abc-d09392edc612_story.html)

[30] Human Rights Watch, Central African Republic: Rape by Peacekeepers, https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/02/04/central-african-republic-rape-peacekeepers (February 4, 2016)

[31] Ibid

[32] Sandra Laville, “UN inquiry into CAR abuse claims identifies 41 troops as suspects,” The Guardian, December 5, 2016 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/05/un-inquiry-into-car-abuse-claims-identifies-41-troops-as-suspects)

[33] George Russell, “Peacekeeper battalion in Central African Republic challenges UN 'war' on sexual abuse,” Fox News, https://www.foxnews.com/world/peacekeeper-battalion-in-central-african-republic-challenges-un-war-on-sexual-abuse (June 9, 2017)

[34] United Nations, Mission Field Headquarters In Mission Operational Readiness Assessment of COGBAT 3, (https://static1.squarespace.com/static/514a0127e4b04d7440e8045d/t/593704a2579fb37a23567889/1496777906180/MINUSCA+ORA.pdf), pg 8

[35] United Nations, MINUSCA- Lack of Professionalism in the Congolese Contingent, May 12, 2017 (https://static1.squarespace.com/static/514a0127e4b04d7440e8045d/t/593704c246c3c490c3ee0b24/1496777924587/CAR+memo.pdf)

[36] Krista Larson, “Group: UN mishandling Central African Republic abuse claims,” Associated Press, September 14, 2017 (https://apnews.com/article/e292fc4299f741629661fd67754050ef)

[37] Paisley Dodds, Phillip Klenfield, “Blunders in Central African Republic sex abuse probe detailed in internal UN review,” The New Humanitarian, October 31, 2019 (https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/investigations/2019/10/31/Central-African-Republic-sex-abuse-probe-internal-UN-review)

[38] Ibid

[39] Ibid

[40] Ibid

[41] Keith J. Allred, “Peacekeepers and Prostitutes: How Deployed Forces Fuel the Demand for Trafficked Women and New Hope for Stopping It,” Armed Forces & Society 33:1 (October 2006), pg 9

[42] Ibid, pg 10

[43] Renee Vezina, “Combating Impunity in Haiti: Why the ICC Should Prosecute Sexual Abuse by UN Peacekeepers,” Ave Maria International Law Journal 1:2 (2012), pg 450

[44] Melanie O’Brien, Overcoming boys-will-be-boys syndrome: Is prosecution of peacekeepers in the International Criminal Court for trafficking, sexual slavery and related crimes against women a possibility? Lund University Publications, http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/1554856 (2004), pgs 39

[45] Vezina, pg 446

[46] Ibid

[47] Ibid

[48] Stephen Pete, Max Du Plessis, “Who Guards The Guards,” African Security Review 13:4 (2004), pg 10

[49] Ibid

[50] Ibid, pg 13

[51] Laura A. Dickinson, “The Promise of Hybrid Courts,” The American Journal of International Law 97:2 (April 2003), pg 295

[52] Rosa Freedman, “Unaccountable: A New Approach to Peacekeepers and Sexual Abuse,” The European Journal of International Law 29:3 (2018), pg 978

[53] Ibid, pg 980

Imperialist Propaganda and the New Cold War With China

PHOTO CREDIT: FOREIGN POLICY ILLUSTRATION/MADOKA IKEGAMI-POOL/GETTY IMAGES/DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

By Matthew Dolezal

Originally published at the author’s blog.

On January 24, a headline in the right-wing Washington Times read, “Coronavirus may have originated in a lab linked to China’s biowarfare program.” The claim was largely debunked and ignored. However, the story was then notably resuscitated by Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin in April. By the end of the piece, Rogin admitted, “We don’t know whether the novel coronavirus originated in the Wuhan lab.” Shortly thereafter, the claim spread to Fox News and other mainstream outlets. Soon enough, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Trump publicly promoted the unfounded conspiracy theory.

According to prominent sources within the scientific community, the virus in question almost certainly has natural origins. For instance, an article featured in the prestigious scientific journal Nature explained:

“Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus. […] Instead, we propose two scenarios that can plausibly explain the origin of SARS-CoV-2: (i) natural selection in an animal host before zoonotic transfer; and (ii) natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer. We also discuss whether selection during passage could have given rise to SARS-CoV-2.”

Furthermore, The Lancet published a letter signed by 27 public health scientists from eight countries who “strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” The letter continues by clarifying that “scientists from multiple countries have published and analyzed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife, as have so many other emerging pathogens.”

In short, the sensational claim that the virus originated in a Chinese lab has absolutely no supporting evidence. This specific case of anti-China propaganda is simply fuel on the pre-existing fire of unfounded Western smears against this rising power in the East. For instance, in August of 2018, prominent Western news media outlets began claiming that the United Nations had compiled reports of Chinese government “internment camps” in which as many as one million ethnic Uyghur Muslims were being held. However, upon further inspection, the claim deteriorated. It turned out that the U.N. as a whole had made no such statement, and that the explosive assertion came from a single individual, Gay McDougall, who was the sole American member of the independent Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

According to the Associated Press, McDougall “did not specify a source for that information in her remarks at the [U.N.] hearing.” Despite the complete absence of evidence for this serious charge, more propaganda subsequently surfaced from other dubious Western sources, including a U.S. government-funded “activist group” called the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD). According to The Grayzone, “ the board of the organization is a Who’s Who of exiled Chinese anti-government activists.” The CHRD has even endorsed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, a neoconservative who has expressed racist views toward Chinese people and supports colonialism.

During his recent trip to China, journalist Danny Haiphong didn’t see “internment camps” in Xinjiang Province. Haiphong further explained that “it is difficult to walk more than a mile without running into a mosque. Every street sign in the city is translated in both Mandarin and Uyghur languages. Security is more plentiful in Ürümqi than in Beijing or Xi’an, and for good reason. Most Westerners are unaware that Xinjiang Province is the site of numerous terror attacks that have taken the lives of hundreds of people.” Due to the ongoing threat of Islamist terrorism, Xinjiang “has set up vocational and training centers in accordance with the law to provide courses on Mandarin, laws, vocational skills and deradicalization programs for people influenced by religious extremism and terrorism.”

Nevertheless, relying heavily on unsubstantiated Western propaganda of the aforementioned variety, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act late last year. The bill, which includes additional economic sanctions, is part of a larger pattern of new Cold War-style escalations between the two powerful nations. With these tensions comes a surge in Sinophobic hate crimes buttressed by bipartisan, racist rhetoric from American politicians, replacing the hysterical Russophobia of yesteryear. As noted in the New York Times, this onslaught is “reminiscent of the kind faced by American Muslims, Arabs and South Asians in the United States after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.”

After its “breathtaking” response to the recent coronavirus outbreak, China has found itself further entrenched in a hybrid war with the American empire. As journalist Pepe Escobar explained, “For the first time since the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, Beijing openly regards the U.S. as a threat…” It is certainly true that China is undermining America’s global hegemony by engaging in international solidarity efforts with nations that have historically been in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism (Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, etc.). Due to the evident domestic decline of American society, this ongoing cooperation between those consistently demonized, sanctioned, invaded, or otherwise targeted by the West could become a model for a multi-polar global future. 

On October 10, 1990, a shocking testimony was given to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus by a 15-year-old girl named Nayirah. The distraught teenager recounted an event she said she had witnessed as a volunteer at a Kuwaiti hospital after the Iraqi invasion earlier that year. “While I was there I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor. It was horrifying,” the girl proclaimed. Although it was partially used to justify the Gulf War, the story turned out to false, just like the narrative that was used to justify the subsequent 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. 

Iraq is not unique. Imperialist lies have also been used to justify American aggression in Libya, Syria, Venezuela, and countless other sovereign nations around the world. Even the justification for the Vietnam War turned out to be fabricated. Such falsehoods have allowed the American empire to violently ravage the globe for decades to protect its so-called economic interests. Now that “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is providing a viable alternative to the battle-scarred neoliberal capitalist model, the imperfect, yet successful economic power that lifted 800 million people out of extreme poverty is being maligned with spurious propaganda. Don’t believe the hype.

Sanctioning Syria

By Chris Ray

This was originally published at Monthly Review.

The United Nations was willing to pay for doors, windows and electrical wiring in Alaa Dahood’s apartment but not for repairs to her living room wall torn open by a mortar strike. That was deemed to be ‘reconstruction’—an aid category forbidden in Syria. “My mother and I used our savings to fix the wall ourselves,” Alaa, a primary school English teacher, told me.

Alaa lives with her widowed mother Walaa in Saif al-Dawla, a suburb of Aleppo that became a frontline between government troops and opposition forces in 2012. After their low-rise housing block came under sniper fire the family fled to a government-controlled sector of the city and, later, to the relative safety of Damascus.

“The stress was too much for my father; he was a nervous man and he died from a heart attack in 2013. My mother and I came home in 2017, when Aleppo was safe,” Alaa said as she served spiced coffee in the living room of her modest two-bedroom home.

More than 521,000 war-displaced Aleppans had returned home by the end of 2018, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported. Very few found their properties undamaged. However, in all of Syria, only 42,000 residents got UN ‘rehabilitation’ aid—the assistance category that covered Alaa’s repairs. UN help was largely restricted to short-term emergency relief—the only aid category acceptable to major UN donors who oppose the continued rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

Alaa got no help with her wall but her UN-financed windows are at least made of glass. In Hanano, a suburb of eastern Aleppo previously under rebel control, a young security guard, Mohamed, showed me his family apartment, which overlooks a football field crammed with the skeletons of burned-out buses and cars. Mohamed installed windows made of plastic sheeting last winter, when the temperature fell below freezing. He got the plastic in a UN-supplied Do-It-Yourself ‘shelter kit’ that included pinewood for window frames, fiberboard for doors, expansion foam, nails and tools.

“Plastic is no good for winter but it is better than nothing,” said Mohamed, who did not want his last name published. Despite a severe fuel shortage he managed to buy enough heating oil to warm the bedroom of his frail 13-year-old sister, Asma, for a couple of hours every night. Mohamed has replaced plastic with glass in one window and is putting aside money to do the rest.

Shelter kits come under the heading of short-term emergency aid. The UNHCR says the kits covered about 92,000 Syrians in 2018—more than twice the number who benefited from home rehabilitation. The UN values shelter kits at around US$500 but recipients often sell them for much less or burn the wood for fuel, according to Syrian agencies that implement internationally-funded programs.

One of the UN’s biggest Syrian partners, the Greek Orthodox aid agency Gopa-Derd, refuses to distribute the kits. “We won’t be a part of putting plastic sheets over window frames where there should be glass. Plastic sheets are not going to fix a hole in a wall or keep a family warm in winter,” said Sara Savva, Gopa-Derd’s deputy director.

Another UN partner, the Syria Trust for Development, which managed Alaa’s repairs, wants shelter kit money redirected to rehabilitation. “We did 1000 shelter kits in 2017 then decided no more. They are a waste of time and resources,” said the Trust’s Aleppo director, Jean Maghamez. He added, however, that the Trust’s rehabilitation program covered only 200 Aleppo apartments in 2019 due to UN funding cuts.

A March 2019 joint statement by the governments of the  U.S., UK, France and Germany reaffirmed their opposition to any reconstruction assistance in Syria until “a credible, substantive, and genuine political process is irreversibly underway.” The UN’s position was set out in a 2018 internal directive from its Office of Political Affairs, then headed by a  U.S. career diplomat, Jeffrey Feltman. “Only once there is a genuine and inclusive political transition negotiated by the parties, would the UN be ready to facilitate reconstruction,” it said.

A negotiated settlement remains distant, however. A UN-backed peace plan drawn up in 2012 is moribund. Separate talks overseen by Assad’s patrons Russia and Iran together with Turkey, which supports elements of the jihadist opposition have also made little progress.

Use of UN funds to rebuild the wall of Alaa Dahood’s apartment would have risked crossing what UN staff in Syria refer to as a “red line” between rehabilitation and reconstruction. Neither term is clearly defined but the line is zealously policed. UN staff in Damascus told me they frequently field questions from governments, other UN donors and “human rights monitors” alert to any infringement of the reconstruction ban.

A June report by New York-based Human Rights Watch wagged a disapproving finger at the UN Development Program (UNDP), UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Oxfam and others for having rebuilt water sanitation networks and healthcare facilities in government-held Syria. Any project aimed at “rebuilding and sustainable restoration of infrastructure, services, housing, facilities, and livelihoods can carry risks of entanglement in serious human rights abuses,” Human Rights Watch claimed.

To avoid breaching the reconstruction ban, the Syria Trust generally will not rebuild any apartment wall with a hole bigger than two square meters, its lead engineer in Aleppo, Ragheb Al Mudarres, told me. Gopa-Derd wants rehabilitation broadly interpreted to allow homes to be made safe for occupation. “If there is a hole in the wall we block it, if water drips from the ceiling we fix it, if there is no door or windows we install them. Some donors consider this to be reconstruction—we don’t,” Sara Savva said.

UN employees say they follow an unwritten guideline to avoid work on any public building with more than 30 percent structural damage. In one case, the reconstruction ban obliged agencies to reject a neighborhood committee’s plea for help to rebuild three schools. Funds were available, the proposal was technically sound, and the schools were in eastern Aleppo—once hailed by regime-change supporters as a bastion of revolution.

Across the country, 1.75 million children have no school to attend and the need in eastern Aleppo is particularly acute. However, its population apparently can expect little help from former foreign sponsors who walked away after the shooting stopped.

The UN describes Syria’s humanitarian needs as “staggering.” About 5.6 million people have gone abroad—about two thirds as refugees—and about 80 percent of the 18 million who remain need assistance. One third of the housing stock has been destroyed, leaving more than six million people without a permanent home.

Some 7.6 million suffer from an acute lack of clean drinking water and 4.3 million women and children are malnourished. Previously eradicated diseases like polio, typhoid, measles and rubella have returned and one in three children misses out on life-saving vaccines. About 1.5 million people live with permanent, conflict-related disabilities.

In this environment, restrictions on foreign aid are onerous but trade and financial sanctions are lethal. They have “contributed to the suffering of the Syrian people” by blocking imports of anti-cancer drugs, antibiotics and rotavirus vaccines, medical equipment, food, fuel, crop seeds, water pumps and other essentials, the UN Special Rapporteur on sanctions, Idriss Jazairy, reported in 2018. Jazairy called the sanctions “pernicious” and said they obstructed efforts to restore schools, hospitals, clean water, housing and employment.

U.S. measures are the most punitive of overlapping sanctions regimes also applied by the European Union, Japan, Canada, Australia and others. In the words of a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, the U.S. is waging “economic war” to “strangle to death” Assad’s government. The casualties are the poor, the sick and children—not the political and business elite.

In Damascus, rebel rockets no longer fall on residential districts that have remained loyal to the government through almost nine years of war. However, rather than celebrating the relative safety, Syrians I meet are exhausted by prolonged and worsening economic hardship. “I lived with war every day for seven years and got used to it. I can’t get used to not being able to feed my family,” a state employee said.

EU and U.S. fuel embargoes have hit hard, with nationwide electricity shortages and long queues for rationed petrol and bottled gas. Pharmaceuticals are even harder to obtain than fuel. The World Health Organization says sanctions block the import of anti-cancer drugs, which were subsidized at low prices by the public health system before the war. Sara Savva said medicine for diabetes or heart disease, when available, could cost an average employee a month’s salary. “Forget about chemotherapy or cancer medication—that’s ridiculously expensive,” she said.

Medical equipment is obsolete because the health ministry can’t import parts or update software. Doctors at a major Damascus hospital told Reuters about 10 percent of patients suffering from kidney failure are dying due to the hospital’s inability to source parts for European-made dialysis machines.

Humanitarian exemptions from sanctions supposedly exist but are difficult and costly to obtain. In any case, financial sanctions have isolated the country from global banking and payment systems, which is why foreign ATM and credit cards are useless in Syria. Even international aid organizations are forced to carry cash across the Lebanese border in vehicles or use informal money traders. So tightly drawn is the noose that European banks have refused to open bank accounts for UN staff when the word “Syria” appeared in their job title.

The UN has not endorsed sanctions but their effect on humanitarian aid has been “chilling,” Jazairy said. Exporters, transport companies, and insurers have refused to do any business with Syria for fear of inadvertently violating U.S. sanctions, which are extraterritorial. They apply to any transaction which involves a U.S. connection, such as goods with more than 10 percent  U.S. content, or use of  U.S. dollars.

In one case, European manufacturers declined to tender for supply of wheelchairs to the UN in Syria. The market is potentially big—about 86,000 Syrians have reportedly lost limbs in the conflict—but not lucrative enough to justify the risk of losing access to  U.S. customers. In his 2018 report, Jazairy argued for the release of Syrian central bank assets “frozen” by the EU. His suggestion that the money be set aside to pay for wheat and animal fodder imports to meet the “urgent survival needs of the population” was ignored.

The UN says its Syrian operations merely complement the work of state bodies, which are primarily responsible for meeting the humanitarian emergency. However, the 2019 national budget was set at less than US$9 billion—half the 2011 level—and actual expenditure is almost certainly lower. In eight years of war, GDP has fallen by between one half and two thirds. During December 2019, the Syrian pound fell to around six percent of its pre-war value.

The government still subsidizes fuel, bread, rice and other staples, but, with ministry budgets shrinking, welfare services are increasingly delivered by local non-government organizations such as the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Gopa-Derd and the Syria Trust. In the Aleppo suburb of Hanano, the Trust runs a UNHCR-funded community center housed in a former Islamic State prison. On the day I visited, a teacher was helping children to model the Earth’s relationship to the Sun with the use of globes and torches. Legal aid was on offer to divorced women seeking child custody and a female doctor was seeing patients.

The center also provides what its English teacher, Walaa Kanawati called a “psychological counselling service.” She said it was in high demand from parents worried about children’s behavior and women subjected to domestic violence. According to Kanawati, the center spends a lot of time trying to teach children and young adults how to disagree without fighting. “We role-play two individuals or two teams and help each side to defend their opinion,” she said. “We pose topics that come out of society, like early marriage, which is a big problem in this area. We’ve got mothers as young as 15.”

The Trust was also holding remedial English and math classes for children who missed years of school when living in rebel-held districts. Kanawati said those children struggle to keep up with lessons and often drop out of school.

Alaa Dahood, the primary school teacher from Saif al-Dawla also talked about the challenge of educating students from what she called “the other side.” “They are two, three and four years behind other children and I have to stay back after class to teach them to read and write,” she said. Some got no schooling in opposition-controlled zones while others were only given religious instruction. But, “parents from the other side usually appreciate education. They want their children to be as good as their classmates,” Alaa said.

In Damascus Gopa-Derd operates a UN-funded community center in the eastern suburb of Dweila. The area is an uneasy mix of residents subjected to years of mortar fire from neighboring Ghouta, a jihadist wartime stronghold, and Ghouta refugees who fled air strikes leading up to the army’s takeover in 2018.

Center staff try to promote integration by making services available to both groups. They also encourage boys and girls to attend classes together. Families displaced from opposition areas typically believe sexes should be segregated at a young age and “only boys are important,” said Remi Al Khouri, a Gopa-Derd manager. She said single-sex primary school classes were unknown in Syria before “the crisis,” adding: “We want to show that it is normal for boys and girls to go to class together and play together.”

In the nearby suburb of Kashkoul, another Gopa-Derd community center was focused on combatting sexual abuse of children. According to the center’s manager, Lina Saker, child abuse got worse during the war. I observed a class of boys and girls aged between five and ten engrossed in an exercise on “body safety and personal boundaries”; a female teacher used a wall chart to indicate the body’s “no touch” areas. “Some of these children are already victims and we want them to know it is unacceptable for people to touch certain parts of their body,” Saker said.

Getting children off the streets and into school would make them less vulnerable but displaced families often rely on sons and daughters to earn income. The center is trying to help children as young as nine who sell bread on the street, prepare shisha pipes in cafes, collect rubbish for recycling and help out on construction sites. It arranged medical treatment and schooling for a 14-year-old girl whose health suffered from her work in a charcoal factory.

While the body safety class was in session, the children’s mothers were in a nearby room talking about early marriage. Most had married before the legal age of 18 and a center employee was encouraging them to open up about the physical, emotional and material consequences. “We want to persuade them to stop their own daughters from marrying early and to give them a good education,” Saker said.