Year after year, since 2005, the United Nations has proclaimed its “zero-tolerance” policy for UN peacekeepers sexually exploiting or even raping the people they’re sent to protect. Year after year, the abuse continues. One of the more recent horrors took place last year in Haiti, when five UN peacekeepers allegedly pulled an 18-year-old Haitian into a UN base, pinned him down on a mattress, beat and raped him. Part of the scene, in which he screams for help while being assaulted, was caught on video.
Haiti’s president protested. The five peacekeepers, all from Uruguay, were sent home to face prosecution. Uruguay’s ambassador to the UN apologized. But now comes a report from ABC News — “Haiti Outrage: UN Soldiers from Sex Assault Video Freed.” ABC’s Brian Ross reports that the case has apparently stalled. It’s been put on “indefinite hold.” And a UN official has confirmed to ABC that the former peacekeepers have been turned loose. It seems the Uruguayan prosecution could not find the victim, though ABC’s Ross notes that his name and address are well known, “if there is any interest in finding him.”
It gets worse. ABC’s report includes an interview with a UN peacekeeping official, an American, Assistant Secretary-General Anthony Banbury. Asked if there’s any way to ensure that UN peacekeepers accused of sexual exploitation and assault will face justice, he simply admits, “Sometimes we can, sometimes we can’t.” In an earlier incident, when more than 100 Sri Lankan peacekeepers in Haiti were expelled for sexually exploiting underage girls, there was no sign they were ever prosecuted. That’s been largely the way of it, as cases of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers have turned up again and again, in places such as the Congo, Bosnia, Cambodia, Liberia, the Ivory Coast, Burundi, Haiti, and South Sudan.
The UN is just applying the standards of justice of the majority of its members. And as I have frequently been told, it’s not my business to meddle in other countries’ affairs.
John Birch was right. Remember the slogan:”Get the U.S. out of the UN, and get the UN out of the U.S.”… That is starting to again play very well these days.
I doubt the average American taxpayer wants to know his tax dollars are supporting a bunch of 3rd world baby rapers.
Just for the record, John Birch never said that. The John Birch Society was named after him, but he had no idea because he was already long dead. The society was named in his honor because he is considered the first victim of the Cold War.
Its a shame that more people see the UN as a problem than see it as a possible tool. If you recruited a proper UN force made up of core and acessory units, designed for relief ops., and you can stabilize a lot of areas before they go boom. I would point to the US Navy and their action after the tsunami in Aceh province, one of the really succesful hearts and minds actions at low cost high yield. If the UN had a couple of engineer corps, they could save a lot of money building infrastructure in areas before the freaking wave comes.
The problem with the UN is, it is beyond repair. The administration of the UN is both incompetent and corrupt, which gives it appearence of a third world totalitatian state. When there is work to be done the slackers look to the U.S. to carry the load and then complain about the way the load is being toted. Maybe the Europeans should take over all the peace keeping missions for a while just to get things ship shape.
Reminds me of the king of the cockroaches and the king of the grasshoppers. The cockroach king lamented the dismal life his roaches were forced to life–in dark, dismal cracks and crevices, poisoned and crushed by a hostile world they didn’t understand. The grasshopper king, sympathizing with the cockroach monarch, suggested that cockroaches become grasshoppers. “They would live a glorious life hopping around in the warmth of the sun.” The roach king thought it a splendid idea. “how do we accomplish that,” he asked. The grasshopper pondered a moment and said, “I don’t know exactly, I make [police, I don’t implement it.”
A small dose of Summary Execution would stop this in its’ tracks!
Another reason for the populace to be armed.
It is my view that the goal of the UN is not to actually solve problems but to simply manage them in perpetuity. So if there is a problem of rape by peacekeepers, they will form a commission that will require third world despots to appoint more of their cronies to “study” the problem and put yet more people on the UN gravy train. The UN has seemed to have turned into an organization designed to provide an income for leftists globally as they search for new problems to manage and expand their budgets accordingly. They are a tick on the world’s collective butt that we could easily live without. In a real army, a soldier caught doing such things to a local civilian in a time of crisis would face summary execution. That would probably have to be done only a very few times and the problem would stop.
The UN is a globalist tool and has been useless from day one and continues to be a total waste of US tax payers money. The USA needs to cut off all funding to the UN at once.
Agreed 100%. An out-dated, useless collection of dictators, despots, & thugs disguised as an humanitarian organization. It absolutely has to go.
I would just like to point out that if you look at the chart at the link for: “Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Allegations Per Mission Involving Minors”, it is actually worse in some ways that is at first apparent.
The worst offending mission, MONUC, has been renamed MONUSCO. MONUSCO adds another 28 incidents to the 130+ in the original MONUC mission.
This is yet another reminder that much of the world, including that shining beacon, the UN, does not share what many in the West consider the most basic of values.
What if the United States withheld funds from the UN until it enacted a policy where any “peacekeeper” accused of crimes in-country faces trial in US courts or military tribunals?
Hmm. Yeah. You’d probably want to make sure that the US’ own record on that sort of thing is exemplary before attempting to sell it to anyone else.
One man’s rapist is another man’s Freedom Fighter!
The greatest tragedy–bar none–that can befall any country is to have UN troops deployed within their borders.
Or the UN General Assembly on it’s own land….
And of course, the U.N. is at the forefront of accusing the U.S. and Israel, and their troops of “atrocities” whenever it can. The accusations are rarely justified, and when they are the perpetrators are reliably and severely punished. Meanwhile, the U.N. merrily sputters along, as ineffective at controlling the criminal behavior of its agents as it is controlling waste, massive financial fraud or human rights abuses among the dictatorships and sundry tyrannies that comprise the majority of its members (a bug, not a feature to them.)
Just one more reason why we should push the whole damn UN building right into the East River, and send every worthless member of that organization home to wherever it is they came from. Let them set up camp in, and be supported by some EU country that thinks they’re worth a damn. Perhaps Brussels would be a good spot.
Why would you waste perfectly good office space like that. Just push the people working there into the river and sell the office space. That way instead of losing billions of dollars a year giving relevance to tyrants dictators and butchers, we can make some money on some prime manhattan real estate.
This whole article is another example of evil Zionist propaganda against the rightous United Nations.
If only Israel didn’t exist! Then there would be no natural disasters anywhere in the world because the evil Federal Reserve would be dissolved!
…. uh … sorry …. channeling a typical Ron Paul supporter … never mind :-}
I always thought sergeants carried sidearms precisely to check this kind of behavior. There’s nothing like the promise of a bullet in the backside to discourage misbehavior. And if the threat is carried out once in a while, it makes a salutary lesson to the unit.
“If the UN is serious about its endlessly recited “zero tolerance” policy toward sexual exploitation and abuse — and the evidence so far suggests it is not — the obvious step is to stop employing troops from member states that let their soldiers get away with rape. Is that too much to ask?”
Yes. To pay and equip and support the number of peacekeepers the UN has around the world exclusively from countries who care about the quality of the character of their military members enough to hang or imprison for life soldiers doing these things, that peacekeeping budget would have to multiply 10 times, at minimum. No one *wants* a high quality UN force, so they will not pay for one.
Worse, to justify using highly competent people of impeccable character on the type of missions UN peace-keepers are most often employed on would require a change in the entire way that the UN goes about the business of “Peace-keeping”. Instead of indefinite commitments to stand between the people living under governments, while looking the other way when a side controlling GA votes wants to strike across the line, the UN would have to show some change as a result of their presence. That change is what the majority of UN members dislike most of all.
Most UN members have governments that are deeply reactionary against the freedoms needed for participation in the continuing industrial revolution. They would far rather roll back those changes than encourage them. The UN has such high agency costs, expressed by both the Secretariat and the GA, that the UN operates as a fig-leaf most often, for those who oppose industrial freedoms. They have no incentive to do what we expect of them.
For countries providing peace-keepers to stop rape would mean hanging soldiers. Yet in many cases it is soldiers who are the main prop to government. Hang soldiers who didn’t even rape kids related to anyone inside the soldiers’ own country, and that support will collapse. When the UN supports governments who are raping their people, why should we expect UN soldiers to be paid and supported at a high enough level to make sure physical rapes do not happen?
It is long past the time we should stop pretending the UN is of any use to industrial society around the world.
There is a common excuse among the “diplomatically inclined” that corrupt global organizations like the UN provide a voice for the various cesspool countries in Africa and elsewhere, keep everyone talking, and reduce the possibility of war. As usual, that’s a lot of camel excrement. The US, for example, could get a much better return on money spent by focusing on relations with individual countries and regional organizations, which we do anyway – unless you get all hot about phony global warming reports and such. The UN is superfluous, and any serious analysis will show it serves no essential national purpose. Of course it pumps money into NYC, a Democrat bastion, so it will be there and Uncle Sam will continue funding it until the facility crumbles into dust, and beyond.
There must be some sort of status of forces agreement between the UN and the host country that forbids criminal charges against the peacekeepers in the host country and that causes the UN to send the perpetrators back to their native lands for prosecution. I’ll bet waiving that immunity to local prosecution once or twice would cure the problem for good.
How dare you judge these valiant peacekeepers’ cultures using your imperialist bias? Every educated person knows that rape is a natural byproduct of power imbalances between the United States and the rest of the world. In fact, your insensitive hounding of these poor soldiers-for-peace simply adds to that hegemonic pressure to strike back at the oppression they feel every day. Shame on you, Claudia Rossett, for causing so much uncontrollable rape!
Gee, where are all those crusading Spanish judges eager to issue arrest warrants for the Secretary General when you need them?
Mark Steyn once described the UN perfectly: To paraphrase, if you mix vanilla ice cream with dog feces, you won’t get anything tasting remotely like vanilla ice cream.
So we’ve tried inviting everyone to the international banquet table. Gangsters masquerading as statesmen (China, Russia), charlatans posing as men of the people (Venezuela, Libya), family-owned organized crime concessions (Syria, North Korea) and one-man psycho-states (Zimbabwe and too many others to mention). When they weren’t busy pocketing the silverware, they were threatening other guests with the cutlery.
The only possible purpose a U.N. on U.S. soil serves is a way to keep our eyes on these reprobates. It is my sincere hope that the place is riddled with bugs and every word uttered in it is recorded for our use.
According to UN customs, rape is a culturally protected social tradition between men and women. Only in the West is rape a crime. Keep your imperialism to yourself
Yeah in Uruguay its like a hand shake. They were all just trying to say hello. Only intolerant bigots like Americans think there is anything wrong with a little rape among friends.
I guess that must explain why no rape ever occurs in america.
No murder either. No sex trafficking, no child abuse, no wife-beating.
Man, you really stuck it to Uruguay. That’ll show them.
I think of how it was in Colonial days when British soldiers who committed crimes against colonists were simply sent back to Great Britain for “trial.” Of course nothing ever happened to the offender.
If the UN were serious about tackling the problems all UN Peacekeepers caught committing crimes would be detained and tried in the country they committed those crimes in instead of sending them back home (not like they broke Uraguayan law, right?). But the UN isn’t serious, so this kind of thing will keep happening.
Nobody would ever send any troops to work with the UN. Least of all the US. The UN can’t demand anything from anyone – it’s not a sovereign power, it’s just an organizing body. Every time a country sends troops to participate in a peace-keeping operation, there’s a contract drawn up to make it legal and to spell out the rules of engagement. If that contract included an independent criminal system to punish troops, or the ability to even detain troops beyond their tour for any reason at all, then no country would ever sign it. You can chuckle and say “let the UN do it itself”, but that’s just silly – the UN isn’t a country, it doesn’t have a population. It’s just a bunch of committees and treaties. If nobody turned up for peacekeeping operations then there’d be no peacekeeping operations.
Yeh, like those committees that dreamed up the oil for food scam in Iraq.
And those UNFIL troops in Lebanon that let Hezbollah use their Jeep to abduct those Israeli soldiers ….
and of course we all saw the results of the UN in action in Indonesia after the tsunami; if it wasn’t for the US navy …
Yeh, like those committees that dreamed up the oil for food scam in Iraq.
They didn’t dream it up, they just let it happen. Here’s a little hint – a committee doesn’t allow something to happen if the members of the committee don’t want it to. When something dubious happens at the UN, that’s probably because it’s what the participants wanted. Unless the members of the committee are very stupid, of course. Sadly, it’s the “very stupid” hypothesis that we’re asked to believe in the case of the oil for food rort. We’re supposed to believe, for example, that the australian department of foreign affairs simply didn’t know that the devious AWB was paying exorbitant “trucking fees” to a mate of saddam’s for the right to ship wheat into iraq. I find that very hard to believe, because I don’t believe the employees of DEFAT are that uninformed or that naive. They wouldn’t be working there if that were the case.
and of course we all saw the results of the UN in action in Indonesia after the tsunami; if it wasn’t for the US navy …
But that’s the point. The UN doesn’t HAVE a navy. It’s an organizing body, a treaty organization – it can’t do anything without the participation of member states. There’s no point bitching about that, because it’s the way it’s supposed to be. It isn’t a government, it isn’t a country, it doesn’t have a military, it can’t independently tell anyone what to do and the only money it has is the money that we give it. If we set it up some other way, then maybe you CAN criticize it for not acting independently.
And nothing you just posted has anything to do with the topic of the thread anyway.
The UN doesn’t HAVE a navy. It’s an organizing body, a treaty organization –
They didn’t need a navy but organization at getting things done. Go read how they wasted time looking for appropriate accommodation before they set foot in the country, and their reaction to the US’ “unilateral” action in sending in the military to help.
Go read about Malloch Brown and his machinations in the UN, along with his pal George Soros in their corrupt effort for global governance.
I can see you’re really keen on this subject. Ok …
“They didn’t need a navy but organization at getting things done.”
Actually, they needed boats, helicopters, a working airfield (things were slowed a bit by somebody crashing a 737 on the one accessible runway).
“Go read how they wasted time looking for appropriate accommodation before they set foot in the country,”
Who is “they”? Try to remember that this is a place that was basically leveled. Whole regions were literally flattened. There wasn’t a problem with “appropriate” accommodation, there was a problem with ANY accommodation. Everything had to be brought in. If not buildings, tents. No tents = nowhere to set up communications, nowhere to run medical services, no security (remember that aceh also had a militant independence movement around this time). This is also a rather warm part of the world we’re talking about – fresh drinking water was also a massive problem – australia was running in shipping-container-sized osmosis units. So I’d love to know what your source is for this claim, because I dare say they’re brushing over a few details to pursue an agenda. The real delay was just transport – long distance air transport was halted by an accident at the aceh airport. Land transport was made difficult by the damage to roads. So it actually took days for significant on-the-ground assistance of any kind to arrive. The most immediate relief, amazingly, was from local groups who swung into action – including a bunch of american IT contractors in jakarta who pooled their money, bought a great big flat-bottomed boat and set sail. I believe they were the first to arrive in banda aceh with fresh food.
As for “set[ting] food in the countrie”, try to remember that indonesia is quite big. Even if aceh completely disappeared there’d be plenty of quite plush accommodation further south.
“and their reaction to the US’ “unilateral” action in sending in the military to help.”
A carrier group was nearby – they flew in supplies and flew out some people needing medical assistance. You’ll have to tell me what “reaction” you’re talking about, and who was “reacting”. Was it indonesia? The TNI? Because nobody at the UN is going to complain about a floating airfield and a bunch of helicopters, and australia had already sent people of its own (at that stage only surveyors). What the indonesian military thought about it might be interesting, though.
“Go read about Malloch Brown and his machinations in the UN, along with his pal George Soros in their corrupt effort for global governance.”
Now we’re back into tin-foil hat territory.
It seems long past time to move the UN out of New York, in the heart of The Great Satan, and into a more appropriate location.
My suggestion would be Port au Prince, Haiti for the new UN headquarters.
“Advocates of UN peacekeeping like to argue that it delivers good value for the price.”
Not if you’re a woman who was raped in Africa by Nigerian “peacekeepers.” Nigeria has traditionally supplied some of the worst troops to these operations, being not only corrupt, but also outright dangerous to the populations they are supposed to be protecting. Some of the worst troops also come from Bangladesh. They see the UN as a way to make a buck, not as a military operation. As a result, when there is actual fighting that needs to be done, the troops from Bangladesh usually run away. If you read “Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda” by Roméo Dallaire and Samantha Power, you will see not only how worthless troops from Bangladesh are when some fighting needs to be done, but you will also see how worthless UN military operations are in general. That book was written by the Canadian general who was in charge of the military operations in Rwanda when the worst form of genocide took place probably since the end of World War II. I felt sorry for this general because he really tried to stop it and make a difference. Unfortunately, due to the shear incompetance of the UN at the time, his hands were tied and literally hundreds of thousands of people died because of it. It is a sad story, as is the history of the UN in general.
..ZERO money from the US and other western nations would be a good way of promoting ZERO TOLERANCE
In Israel we have a saying: “he’s as useless as a UN observer”.
UN observers have a few choice things to say about israelis, too.
UN observers have a few choice things to say about israelis, too.
Nice to hear that UN Peacekeeper pedophiles often moonlight as Jewish-conspiracy theory peddlers. Hadn’t heard that one.
I wonder: do the armed forces of Uruguay, Bangladesh etc. treat their own people in the same manner as they do people of other nations?
Yes, of course. One World government will solve this. Merely giving the UN more authority (oh, yeah, and money) will solve this. America is so corrupt. Other nations are far better at behaving lawfully and ethically.
/ <– sarc tag, in cause you can't tell
Maybe they should be called “Piece Keepers…”
I have one idea. Dont a lot of these countries get paid by the UN for supplying these peacekeepers. If so, one reform that would help bigtime is to withold part of their pay after any incident, and only give it to them if the offenders are successfully prosecuted. That way they have a real incentive to follow through on the prosecutions, which they dont now.
The United Nations was founded by an ego maniac named Franklyn Delano Roosevelt. FDR was a hero to my grandparents’ and somewhat to my parents’ generations; he did see the danger in Hitler’s Nazi Germany, he did set up welfare programs during the Great Depression.
FDR was elected four times to the presidency, the only US president (so far) who ignored George Washington’s precident of a two-term limit. So hungry for power, so irreverant to traditions and values held by American presidents since 1789 was this man.
Roosevelt set in motion a tremendous increase in the size, scope and power of the Federal Government. Most economists now agree that FDR’s programs held back economic recovery; unemployment was as bad just before WWII as when he took office.
Of course the average guy on the breadline was grateful, and thought Roosevelt’s policies would help him; and FRD’s Fireside Chats placed the blame for the nation’s malaise on “the rich” and “big business”, myths that persist to this day…along with a bank-rupted Ponzi scheme call Social Security.
Roosevelt also failed to see the dire danger of Stalin’s Soviet Union; in fact Roosevelt almost groveled at Joe Stalin’s feet and handed Eastern Europe over to the nightmare of Marxist enslavement.
The man behind these sell-outs of human liberty set up the United Nations so he could be it’s head and therefore leader of not just the USA, but the entire world. FDR died before that dream was realized.
The United nations has had almost 67 years to proove it’s worth, has cost the US taxpayer $BILLIONS, have been a forum for those who hate us to attack us, is absolutely corrupt, has stood by while over 300 wars were waged, many between UN member nations, has overstepped it’s authority…and has come up useless and worthless.
It’s time now for the U.S. to get out of the U.N., and for the U.N. to get out of the U.S.
So … you’re saying the UN should have an independent judiciary, with the power to enforce its own rulings with criminal sanctions?
Think it through.
Until that happens, the UN has to make do with what member states send to it to work with. And if those member states are bozos and don’t throw the book at their troops when they do the unthinkable, then there’s not a lot the UN can do about it.
Bottom line – no country will give the UN that sort of power over its own soldiers and staff. Not a chance. Hell will freeze over before the US gives ANYONE jurisdiction over its troops. Yes, yes, I know – but the US are the good guys. But unless the good guys are prepared to stump up the people to man every single peacekeeping operation, the UN is stuck with the rest.
Bottom line – no country will give the UN that sort of power over its own soldiers and staff
But there are many on the Left in the States, including George Soros, who want just that; they also want the US to give up its territorial waters to UN control, gun control and basically its power.
Two things:
(1) Nonsense. Stop hyperventilating, calm down and stop believing what you read on the internet.
(2) Nobody’s proposing that, nobody would ever accept it if it were, it’s not the current situation, so how about thinking about how that affects the topic of the thread.
The UN isn’t “stuck” with anything. If you haven’t got anything worth sending, then don’t send it. If you’re trying to fight a fire, and the only available equipment are incendiary munitions, hopefully you wouldn’t choose to drop them in the area. At the very least, it’d be nice to admit that the chance of these ‘peacekeepers’ keeping themselves in check is remote, and that anyone within range of them is subject to assault with little or no hope of justice. If quality is impossible, a little truth in advertising would be nice.
The UN isn’t “stuck” with anything. If you haven’t got anything worth sending, then don’t send it.
An interesting idea. It would cause a stir. First of all, the security council (in voting for an operation) would have to give the executive the power to reject troop contributions.
One problem would be this: If the UN rejected offers of troops from any country which had ever sent somebody who’d been suspected of child molesting while on duty … there might not be any countries left to send troops.
One problem would be this: If the UN rejected offers of troops from any country which had ever sent somebody who’d been suspected of child molesting while on duty … there might not be any countries left to send troops.
Yeah, I can see why a slight decrease in officially sanctioned serial pedophilia on a global scale might be a problem for you.
Because these evil Peacekeepers from Hell are NEVER punished for their horrible crimes against innocents, it appears, it is unofficial UN policy for Peacekeeper Monsters to be ALLOWED to rape. Because of this unofficial UN policy, rapists are applying for the job of Peacekeeper so that they can rape, confident in the knowledge they will NEVER be punished. Predators are ALLOWED to rape.
The UN is the most evil organization on earth. An organization that HATES human rights and freedom, and is consumed with an intense hate for innocent humanity. The UN seizes every opportunity to hurt and destroy innocents. Not one more dollar to the evil UN!
And our media does not consider this news. They would sooner ask Mitt Romney about contraception. Liberals are complicit.
It isn’t really news at all. It’s been going on for a long, long time.
The UN has an agenda (21) and that agenda is about global governance, no borders, no private property, no freedom. Get US out of the UN and get the UN out of the US!
The same thing happened in East Timor.
The Australian Army spent more time protecting the local population from being raped by UN ‘peacekeepers’ than they did in confronting the Indonesian military.
Probably a bit of an overstatement. Rapes were reported by foreign troops and civilians, but commanders did responded to the threat. Foreign NGOs were present, as were journalists and troops from 22 or so countries. If child exploitation can happen when australians and kiwis are running the show, it can probably happen anywhere.
You spend an inordinate amount of time defending the UN’s long history of instititionalised child rape.