'Peacekeepers are like doctors'
2005-06-01 09:59
United Nations - The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday pledged to support efforts to stop sexual misconduct by UN peacekeepers through stricter education, monitoring and investigation of troops.
The security council adopted a presidential statement - a move which requires unanimity within the council - that urges countries contributing troops to peacekeeping operations to discipline any of their soldiers found guilty of abuse.
"The security council, while confirming the primary responsibility of troops contributing countries for the conduct and discipline of their troops, recognises the shared responsibility of the secretary general and all member states to take every measure within their purview to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse by all categories of personnel in UN peacekeeping missions", the statement said.
It also calls on all states to "ensure that such acts are properly investigated and appropriately punished".
Repugnant
"It would be offensive for me to suggest that the UN should hold itself to anything but the highest standard of ethical conduct," Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid al-Hussein, the permanent representative of Jordan to the UN, said in an address to the Council.
"For a peacekeeper to exploit the vulnerability of a wounded population already the victim of all that is tragic and cruel in war, is really no different than a physician who would violate a patient entrusted to his care... However rare they may be, abuses by peacekeepers are therefore non only repugnant to us but strike at the very credibility of both the operation in question and this organization as a whole", he added.
Prince Zeid is UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's special adviser on this issue and the author of a report, published in March of this year, that provided material for the council's statement. Among other things, the report emphasised proper training for UN forces and called for the establishment of a professional team to investigate allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers.
Sexual misconduct by UN peacekeepers was put under scrutiny last year after refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) lodged numerous complaints. A UN report in January concluded that peacekeepers in that country had had sex with girls as young as 13 in exchange for eggs, milk or cash sums as low as $1.
Soon afterwards, the UN adopted a "zero tolerance" policy regarding sexual misconduct by UN personnel, including a "non-fraternisation" rule that bars its peacekeepers from having sex with locals, and Annan commissioned Prince Zeid's report.