1. Conduct and Discipline in Un Peacekeeping Operations: Culture, Political Economy and Gender
- Author:
- Catherine Lutz, Matthew C. Gutmann, and Keith Brown
- Publication Date:
- 10-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
- Abstract:
- Systematic patterns of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) have emerged around UN peacekeeping missions over the course of many years.1 Reports of abuse by peacekeepers in Cambodia and the Balkans in the 1990s were followed by news of similar problems in West African missions in 2001 and 2002. The Secretary General subsequently issued a 2003 Bulletin outlining a zero-tolerance policy, but the abuse continued. In 2004, peacekeeper misconduct became widely known through mainstream media reports that UN personnel in MONUC, the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, had been engaging in sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) of local women and children. The SEA included, most egregiously, peacekeepers' exchange of UN food supplies or money for sex with young girls and sometimes boys. SEA has been a particular problem in mission areas where extreme poverty and conflict or post-conflict trauma and social dislocation drive local people to sell their bodies, but it has occurred in more developed contexts as well, such as Cyprus and Kosovo. The UN response to these problems has been to establish, in 2005, a Conduct and Discipline Unit with offices in New York and mission areas, charged with addressing the problem in a variety of ways. SEA continues to occur since then, with serious incidents revealed in Sudan, Liberia, Haiti, Cote d'Ivoire, and again in the Congo.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Corruption, Crime, Gender Issues, Sex Trafficking, and Peacekeeping
- Political Geography:
- United States, New York, Sudan, Kosovo, Cambodia, Haiti, Liberia, West Africa, and Cyprus