UN officials struggle to deal with sex scandal in Congo
BUKAVU, Congo -- One evening four months ago, a soft-spoken 18-year-old named Aziza was selling bananas in the Bukavu market when some UN peacekeepers summoned her to their car. Aziza went over thinking they wanted to buy fruit, but was persuaded to engage in a different kind of transaction.
''They offered me love," she said, in the colloquial French spoken in this former Belgian colony. And money -- just $5, but more than she would make in a month at the market. ''It was done in the car, in the dark," she said. ''I didn't have the strength to refuse."
Those words became a refrain in her story, one of many dogging the UN mission in Congo. The next time Aziza met with the peacekeepers, two of them insisted on having sex with her simultaneously. They beat her when she refused to do the things they showed her on pornographic videos. Her mother found out what had happened when Aziza had to go to the hospital with an infection and threw her out of the house. Desperate, she went back to the foreigners several more times.
''I don't know whether they are normal or not," said Aziza, who did not want to use her full name out of shame. ''I wonder whether all white people are like that."
Certainly some, even many, UN peacekeepers and civilian officers in this war-plagued region were. Aziza's story and at least 150 others tales of sexual abuse in Congo have come to light in recent months, shocking an institution that considers itself an agency of mercy.
The shock has inspired action toward an overhaul of the UN's 16 peacekeeping missions around the world. In Congo, home to the largest operation -- with about 11,000 soldiers and 1,200 civilians -- the allegations point to nearly all of the major peacekeeping contingents. But they also involve senior civilian officials, including a top security officer, a chief on the UN special envoy's staff, and an internal oversight investigator.
The charges range from rape to exploitation -- sex for a bottle of water or a military ration -- to ''relationships" or solicitations that are marked by a severe imbalance in power. One case, involving a French UN staffer who took digital pictures of underage girls, has caused concern that it could become ''the UN's Abu Ghraib" if the photos get out.
Charges of sexual abuse have haunted UN peacekeepers for years, most notably during operations in Cambodia, the Balkans, and Liberia in the 1990s. But the cases in Congo may mark a tipping point. Two years after the first charges were made, top UN officials have finally denounced the problem openly and vowed to punish those involved.
Last month, Secretary General Kofi Annan addressed the issue publicly for the first time.
''I am afraid there is clear evidence that acts of gross misconduct have taken place. This is a shameful thing for the United Nations to have to say, and I am absolutely outraged by it," Annan said while attending a summit in neighboring Tanzania. He said he has ''zero tolerance" for sexual exploitation and abuse. ''We cannot rest until we have rooted out all such practices . . . and we must make sure that those involved are held fully accountable."
It is pain upon pain for the victims. A five-year war dragged in the armies of five nations and left at least 2 million people dead from starvation and disease. The fighting officially ended in 2003, but lingers on in Congo's border towns. So does the suffering of the people who have been targeted by soldiers on all sides of the conflict.
The people of Bukavu, a bucolic town with lush rolling hills on the edge of a shimmering lake, cheered when UN soldiers arrived several years ago to protect a fragile peace. The elation didn't last.
''I have to tell you because of the misery here, anyone who has some dollars can have anybody do anything," said Idesbald Byabuze, a law professor at the Catholic University of Bukavu who was one of the first to publicly denounce the UN peacekeepers' behavior almost two years ago. ''But we have very strong values here. People have never accepted what has happened with our girls."
Jean-Marie Guehenno, undersecretary general for peacekeeping, said he has been trying to battle the problem since he arrived at the UN four years ago.
''I have seen a problem with every national contingent," he said.
He declined to discuss specific countries, but other sources said that the most allegations have centered on Uruguayans, Moroccans, and South Africans, in numbers that reflect the proportion of each nation's troops. Soldiers from Pakistan, Tunisia, and Nepal are also implicated. The best behaved seem to be the Indians and the Bangladeshis.
