UN peacekeeping mission leader quits over vehicle abuse claims

UN chief Ban Ki-moon told reporters that he had requested his resignation.

In Haiti, 231 people admitted to having “transactional sexual relationships” with peacekeeping personnel in exchange for “jewellery, church shoes, dresses, fancy underwear, perfume, cell phones, radios, televisions and, in a few cases, laptops”. “Too often justice is denied”. He said those cases were being investigated.

Ten years after the establishment of a “comprehensive strategy” to eliminate sexual violence by United Nations’ Peacekeepers, reports of rape and sexual exploitation have continued to mar the voluntary forces who serve the worldwide agency.

“An independent civilian investigation must be urgently launched, and those implicated must be suspended immediately and for the duration of the investigation”, Joanne Mariner, Amnesty International’s senior crisis response adviser, said.

“A failure to pursue criminal accountability for sexual crimes is tantamount to impunity”.

The resignation letter confirms “there is rot at the top and no one is dealing with it”, the advocacy group said.

A recent UN report stated that UN peacekeepers routinely trade sex for money, jewellery, cellphones in countries where they are deployed.

But AIDS-Free World, an advocacy group that has has criticized UN peacekeeper misconduct, said heads should roll at higher levels of the United Nations.

The UN chief pointedly appealed to victims of abuse by UN peacekeepers to “please come forward” and pledged that there would be action taken in response to their claims.

Ban outlined a series of steps to the Security Council a day after firing the head of the UN force in the Central African Republic over a string of scandalous allegations of child sexual abuse by the peacekeepers. Most recently, Amnesty global released a report on Tuesday accusing a United Nations police officer of raping a 12-year-old girl during a nighttime house-to-house search in Bangui.

The three-person panel has already traveled to Bangui and is due to present its findings in the coming months, but Ban said he wanted to “take action now” to enforce the UN’s zero-tolerance policy of sex abuse.

“The Secretary-General expressed his resolve to help the affected individuals [and] preserve the integrity of the UN flag”, he added.

“We’re going to have to make the system far more vigilant and far better at ensuring that there is sufficient connectivity with communities and sufficient vigilance on mission leadership”, she said. They are usually drawn from poorer countries such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nepal and Pakistan, which recruit for their armed forces unselectively and may not have tight command and control practices.

“The fact that there has been follow through in capital and that people have been held accountable, that that be known”.

Earlier, the UN had denied allegations it covered up child abuse by French troops serving in auto.