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February 02, 2006

Must Boys Be Boys?: Fletcher Guest Examines Sexual Abuse by UN Peacekeepers

Blaming what she terms a “hyper-masculine” UN culture that adopts a “boys will be boys” attitude, Sarah Martin, an advocate with U.S.-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) Refugees International, detailed the existence and encouragement of sexual abuse in UN peacekeeping missions to a February 1 crowd at The Fletcher School.

Martin presented some of the findings from her October 2005 Refugees International report, “Must Boys Be Boys? Ending Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in UN Peacekeeping Missions”, to an audience assembled through the Boston Consortium on Gender, Security, and Human Rights and The Fletcher School’s student-run International Migration Group (formerly Refugee Roundtable).

Martin, who has a particular interest in gender-based violence, was as shocked as the rest of the international community to hear of the 2004 abuse scandal surrounding international peacekeepers in the UN Mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These troops, who had been deployed to protect civilians from various rebel groups that had displaced them, were guilty of the worst kind of exploitation, Martin said.

“Here were these guys sent to protect a vulnerable population, and instead they preyed on them,” she said. “The [civilian] women were crawling out from the camps at night to sell themselves to the peacekeepers for a piece of bread, jam – very small things.”

She added, “Partially, we are so shocked [at this behavior] because of their name: ‘peacekeepers.’”

Martin’s firsthand experience in Liberia, another post-conflict country that had seen a rise in prostitution and sexual exploitation, made her realize that this problem was not unique to the Congo. While investigating potential channels for civilians to report abuse or violence at the hands of the military, she discovered that there were none to speak of. UN agencies, local officials, and NGO staff – all part of a system Martin describes as an “impenetrable fortress” – deferred responsibility for what she came to see was a real issue for Liberian women.

“I realized more and more what a problem this was,” Martin said. “But how can you know the depth of the problem when you have no mechanisms to report it?”

This realization, and the increased incidence of human trafficking to service soldiers who would pay for sex, led Martin to author several policy bulletins for Refugees International. In light of the Congo scandal, she was determined to publicize similar abuses in Liberia, as well as in Haiti, another post-conflict country.

Studies later released estimated that up to 60 percent of Liberian women had been victims of sexual violence during and after the conflict, and sexually-transmitted diseases were prevalent among troops. However, the general lack of reproductive and health services in post-conflict Liberia meant that these issues were not properly addressed.

“AIDS is not seen as a priority in post-conflict countries, because it happens down the line,” Martin said. “It’s seen as a development problem.”

Haiti, too, has experienced its share of sexual exploitation during peacekeeping, with no methods for women to report abuse.

“In Haiti, the police are so corrupt that a women’s organization told me that a woman who goes to the police is more likely to be raped than to be helped,” Martin said.

Martin points to a UN system that staffs peacekeeping missions with overwhelmingly male leaders as perpetuating the problem. However, she said, the solution is not as easy as recruiting more women to peacekeeping missions, as the majority of those deployed come from developing nations, where women are not encouraged to join the military.

Additionally, she said, training on gender issues is sorely inadequate, relegated to secondary status and not prioritized for incoming troops. She suggests local training in soldiers’ home countries for gender issues as a potential remedy.

By raising awareness of these issues, Martin hopes to start a dialogue and generate solutions from the international community as a whole.

“By allowing the cycle of exploitation to continue, we, as the international community, are failing the very people we’re trying to protect,” she said.

By Stacy Reiter Neal, MALD ‘07

Posted by fletcher at February 2, 2006 11:21 AM