10/24/2005

Click here to view the entire article.

Below is an excerpt from a New York Times Editorial:

Nothing discredits the United Nations more than the continuing sexual abuse of women and girls by soldiers belonging to its international peacekeeping missions. And yet almost a year after shocking disclosures about such crimes in Congo, far too little has been done to end the culture of impunity, exploitation and sexual chauvinism that permits them to go on.

...

The whole purpose of these missions is to help countries ravaged by civil or international conflict restore stability, guarantee public security and instill the rule of law. When United Nations peacekeepers rape the people they were sent to protect and coerce women and girls to trade sex for food, as they were found to have done in Congo last winter, they defeat the purpose of their mission and exploit some of the world's most vulnerable people.

...

six months later there has been disappointingly little change in the attitudes that feed such abuse. That was the finding of a new report by Refugees International, an advocacy group that recently visited peacekeepers in Haiti and Liberia.