UN reforms aim to end sexual abuse by peacekeepers

When Roxanna Carrillo came to work at the new United Nations peacekeeping mission in Burundi in September 2004, she knew she needed to clarify the standards of behaviour expected of personnel.

As head of the innovative 'code of conduct' unit at the United Nations Operation in Burundi (ONUB), Carrillo has been responsible for training and monitoring the deportment of UN peacekeeping staff in the central African nation, where more than 200,000 people have died in ethnic violence since 1993.

Efforts to establish a power-sharing government are currently underway, but violence remains widespread, and the UN Security Council established a mission of nearly 6,000 troops in May 2004. In recent months Carrillo has regularly travelled by helicopter to speak to UN military and civilian personnel stationed in camps throughout the country.

"In every single location we have addressed the issue of sexual exploitation," Carrillo told IRIN in a telephone interview. "We discuss with the head officers in the camp what they've been doing, whether there've been incidents, and how they are handling discipline within the battalion."

When Carrillo talks with the troops, who come from a total of 47 different nations, she asks what they would think if their mothers - or wives, or daughters, or sisters - were in a situation of sexual exploitation or abuse. This concern is then echoed by the mission's code of conduct, prominently posted in bathrooms, mail rooms and supply stores.

"We have to tackle this issue by focusing on prevention," said Carrillo. "It's very necessary to do this in a preventative way by bringing it to the awareness of all the staff at the very beginning, rather than dealing with the aftermath."

In recent years UN peace missions have been marked by allegations that some peacekeeping troops have sexually exploited the very people they were sent to protect. The alleged abuses, most notably in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), have ranged from the exchange of food, money, or goods for sex, to the sexual exploitation of minors.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said he was "absolutely outraged" by the misconduct, and the world body "cannot rest" until such practices have been rooted out and those involved held fully accountable. Several working groups and task forces have been launched at UN headquarters to address the problem.

In March the UN released a report by Annan's special adviser on the issue, Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein of Jordan, which argued that sexual exploitation by soldiers under UN command damaged the credibility and effectiveness of peacekeeping operations. The UN manages a force that tops 70,000 in 17 missions worldwide.

Zeid's 41-page report called for "radical change" in the way sexual exploitation and abuse are addressed within UN missions, and suggested that personnel be held personally accountable through appropriate disciplinary action, financially accountable for any harm done to victims, and criminally accountable if the acts constitute crimes under applicable laws.

Despite the high-level attention in the UN, accusations of abuse continue to emerge on the ground. In late April, the UN mission in Liberia said it was investigating new allegations of sexually exploitative behaviour by some of its personnel.

Creating a culture of accountability

Media and human rights groups have documented peacekeepers' involvement in sexual exploitation and abuse in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Kosovo in the early 1990s, then later in Mozambique, Cambodia, East Timor and Liberia.

But it was not until the widespread allegations of abuse emerged in the DRC in mid-2004 that numerous high-level officials responded to the charges, said Nicola Dahrendorf, director of a new UN office in the Congo investigating cases involving UN personnel.

Juliane Kippenberg, a researcher specialising in sexual exploitation for Human Rights Watch, alleged the UN's reaction to the accusations had been "very slow".

"It's only really at the beginning of this year that the UN began showing that it's taking this much more seriously," she said.

Since 1 January 2004 the UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) has completed investigations involving 118 peacekeeping personnel, including civilians and civilian police, according to Anna Shotton, DPKO's focal point on sexual exploitation and abuse.

The investigations have so far resulted in five UN staff being fired, and 68 being returned to their home countries, including six in managerial or command positions.

"We're not just holding the individuals who've been involved in sexual exploitation accountable, we're also holding the commanders responsible for their failure to put the right measures in place to prevent sexual exploitation," said Shotton.

She noted that in the last few months a number of missions have begun to implement new prevention and enforcement measures. For example, all incoming peacekeeping personnel in Cote d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, and Liberia now receive training in UN codes of conduct.

Many missions, including those in Kosovo and the DRC, have even drawn up lists of "no go" areas prohibited to personnel, such as bars and parts of town considered to be frequented by sex workers. The DRC mission has also initiated a requirement that military personnel wear their uniform even when they are off duty.

"All those measures are basically ad hoc attempts by missions to get to grips with the problems," Shotton noted. "In many of the new missions, they're trying to get a grip before the problem erupts."

Shotton pointed to a concern highlighted in the Zeid report: that, traditionally, there has been no uniform standard of conduct for all categories of personnel involved in peacekeeping missions - including civilian police, military observers, members of national contingents, United Nations Volunteers, consultants and individual contractors.

Now, Shotton said, all peacekeeping personnel are held to a single standard that prohibits sex in exchange for money, goods or services, and sex with anyone aged under 18 - regardless of whether troops come from countries where prostitution is legal, or have different age-of-consent laws.

Shotton pointed out that the DPKO had also stepped up the quality of investigations by turning to professional investigators at the UN's independent Office of Internal Oversight Services.

In the past, she noted, UN scrutiny of sexual exploitation and abuse had been conducted by "enthusiastic amateurs" from each mission. These investigators may or may not have had the right skills to conduct a thorough inquiry into events.

DRC: using professional investigations to deter future abuses

The United Nations Mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo, or MONUC, was at the heart of the sexual exploitation scandal that spurred the Zeid report, and was now the focus of DPKO's efforts to make its investigations more professional, according to UN officials. MONUC has recently established an office headed by Dahrendorf to address sexual exploitation and abuse.

"This is the first time this has ever been done in a peacekeeping operation," said Dahrendorf, whose team includes 10 specialised investigators with experience in sex crimes and crimes against women and children.

The office, formally established in early March 2005, investigates every allegation of misconduct. That, Dahrendorf said, was crucial to sending the message - to both personnel and the local community - that the mission was serious about prosecuting perpetrators. So far, the office has established a hotline, an email contact and a confidential fax number, so community members can file formal complaints.

"These are concrete things to show people we are available 24 hours a day," Dahrendorf observed.

"What we are doing has an impact on what other missions are doing," she commented, adding that the office was currently developing a strategy to provide all personnel with ongoing training in what standards they were expected to uphold as part of the international body. "Our recommendation is that you can't just do a once-off training; you have to do it on an ongoing basis," she said.

As abuses are addressed, new questions arise

According to UN officials, as training and accountability measures are implemented, managers and force commanders will face increased scrutiny of their role in creating environments that neither condone nor encourage sexual violence and abuse.

"One of the big problems we've faced is that there has been a culture of complacency and a culture of impunity," said Lisa Jones, the focal point on sexual exploitation and abuse for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), of which IRIN is a part. "A change is coming, where we will see much more action taken via managers and force commanders - I think that will have an enormous impact."

In an effort to reform the culture of complacency, Jones said all staff members now have an obligation to report instances of exploitation, even if they only suspect such abuse. This new responsibility, combined with the easier mechanisms for reporting abuse, might mean the number of allegations against personnel would go up before turning around.

"We actually think that we'll go through a time where the number of reports and allegations will increase," Jones noted. "It's terrible that these things are occurring, but it will be a positive sign that systems are in place to capture what is going on."

As missions began to take more stringent disciplinary measures against perpetrators, individuals would change their behaviour. "I think that people being seen to be disciplined will have the greatest impact on the system," she commented.

Limiting sexual relationships between peacekeepers and local residents was also important, because peacekeepers were stationed in societies traumatised by violence and poverty, while areas of conflict often created opportunities for relationships in which power could be abused.

Due to the increased likelihood of exploitation, relationships with residents in the community were "strongly discouraged".

"We take on a particular responsibility to the communities we work with," Jones noted. "That is going to mean that it's a higher standard than we would have in our daily lives in other locations."

While some have questioned whether it was realistic to prohibit sexual relations between UN personnel and members of the community, Jones said it was only part of the very high standard that peacekeeping personnel must uphold as part of their duty to serve.

"If you take on a job in the United Nations, you commit to doing that. If you see that as an unnecessary infringement to your personal freedom, then don't apply," she commented.

Seeing sexual exploitation in context of conflict

Because sexual violence against women and children is so prevalent in conflict and post-conflict situations, the UN is carefully considering how it should respond to those abused by peacekeepers: if community members perceive that victims of UN personnel get special treatment, the cycle of exploitation could worsen.

"It's important we don't create this special category of victims," Jones pointed out. "We need to support these people as part of an overall approach."

UNOB's Carrillo said this was particularly true in war-torn areas, such as the DRC and Burundi.

"You cannot de-link the issue of abuse from poverty and development, and you cannot de-link overall inequality of women and girls from the abuse of women and girls," Carrillo noted, adding that this had practical implications when you considered the extreme social inequality between peacekeepers and residents.

"Our staff has better salaries, better houses; we shop at the better stores," she said. "Right there the expression of the disparity of power is so obvious, you can really send the wrong message to communities."

According to Kippenberg of Human Rights Watch, that was why the UN had to consider its power within the larger context of ongoing sexual violence.

"The DRC is the scene of very, very widespread sexual violence - including mouth rape, gang rape and mutilation," she said. "Horrific sexual abuses are used to terrorise civilians by armed groups, and are conducted by practically all sides."

Kippenberg noted that while there should be a strong reaction in the UN, she did not believe the exploitative behaviour of isolated individuals should overshadow MONUC's role amid the ongoing violence in the DRC.

"It's very important that MONUC is strengthened, instead of weakened, through these reforms," she commented. "Sexual exploitation is a very serious issue in the Congo, and not just by UN peacekeeping forces, but by others. Women and girls have a lower status - you can buy a life for very little, and you can buy sex for very little."

"The bigger picture is that this area is devastated by conflict," she continued. "At the end of the day, the majority of the Congolese population doesn't care about this issue [of isolated cases of abuse by peacekeepers]; they care about the human rights issues at the centre of this continued armed conflict - killings, rape, mutilation, torture, looting, abductions, child soldiers."

New mission, new opportunities

It is Roxanna Carrillo's job to make sure peacekeepers coming to the Burundi mission understand the expected standard of sexual conduct, particularly in the context of the surrounding violence. Since last month, every new staff person at the mission - whether civilian, military, or military police - has been required to attend a one-on-one briefing with the code of conduct office as part of their orientation.

"We go over the code of conduct and discuss the issues," said Carrillo. "It's not just a piece of paper - I explain what it means, and I give them an opportunity to ask questions."

The code of conduct includes injunctions to "treat everyone with respect, courtesy and consideration", and to "be sensitive to local culture ... observing strict gender-sensitive behaviour". It also includes a section on sexual misconduct, explicitly stating the prohibition on using sex workers, and any sexual activity with persons under the age of 18.

"Mistaken belief in the age of the person is no defence," it states.

There is also an additional prohibition on any sexual misconduct that "has a detrimental effect on the image, credibility, impartiality or integrity of the United Nations".

Carrillo's office has investigated six formal complaints of sexual misconduct since September 2004. "None of these cases amount to a pattern of misconduct," she pointed out. "We are ensuring that the people accused are being investigated; that the complaints are treated as confidential, and are respected."

While Carrillo expects similar work to become the norm in all the missions, there are currently only three other code of conduct offices among the UN's 17 missions - in Haiti, Cote d'Ivoire, and Sudan.

"I just hope more missions will do work in this area," she said. "But if you don't have support from the head of mission, and the senior leadership in both the civilian and the military sides, you cannot go very far."