UN to investigate report of peacekeepers sexually abusing children
UNITED NATIONS, New York: The United Nations will investigate allegations by a leading children's charity that UN peacekeepers were involved in widespread sexual abuse of children, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said.
The report, released Tuesday by Save the Children UK, was based on field research in southern Sudan, Ivory Coast and Haiti. It describes a litany of sexual crimes committed by peacekeepers and international relief workers against children as young as 6 years old.
According to the report, some children were denied food aid unless they granted sexual favors; others were forced to have sex or to take part in child pornography; many more were subjected to improper touching or kissing.
"The report shows sexual abuse has been widely underreported because children are afraid to come forward," Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children UK, said.
"A tiny proportion of peacekeepers and aid workers are abusing the children they were sent to protect. It ranges from sex for food to coerced sex. It's despicable."
Calling the sexual exploitation of minors a "very serious issue," Ban reiterated to reporters that he has a "zero tolerance" policy for UN personnel who engage in such behavior.
"I think that the report is very valuable and does give us some good points to which the United Nations should continue to address this issue," Ban said Tuesday. "On all these cases which have been raised, we will very carefully investigate" and will take "necessary measures" where appropriate.
Earlier, a UN spokeswoman, Michele Montas, praised the report. "It's fair, and I think it's essentially accurate," she said.
Abuses have been reported in peacekeeping missions ranging from Bosnia and Kosovo to Cambodia, East Timor, West Africa and Congo. The issue moved into the spotlight after the United Nations found in early 2005 that peacekeepers in Congo had sex with Congolese women and girls, usually in exchange for food or small sums of money.
Several month later, Jordan's UN ambassador at the time, Prince Zeid al-Hussein, wrote a report that described the UN military arm as deeply flawed. He recommended withholding the salaries of the guilty and requiring nations to pursue legal action against perpetrators.
In response, the UN adopted a zero tolerance policy toward sexual exploitation and abuse, and a universal code of conduct. The UN requires training for all peacekeepers, but punishment for offenders is left to individual countries.
Montas said the report stated that the UN had already undertaken steps designed to tackle the problem, from establishing conduct and discipline units in all UN missions to strengthening training for all categories of UN personnel. She said the UN also needed to strengthen its investigative capacity.
The study was based on research, confidential interviews and focus groups conducted last year. The charity emphasized that it did not produce comprehensive statistics about the scale of abuse but did gather enough information to indicate the problem was severe.
The report said that more than half the children interviewed knew of cases of sexual abuse and that in many instances children knew of 10 or more such incidents carried out by aid workers or peacekeepers.
The Save the Children UK researchers, who met with 129 girls and 121 boys between the ages of 10 and 17, as well as with a number of adults, found an "overwhelming" majority of the people interviewed would never report a case of abuse and had never heard of a case being reported.
The threat of retaliation, and the stigma attached to sex abuse, were powerful deterrents to coming forward, the report said.
A study by the non-profit organisation Save the Children UK claims that a number of aid workers and peacekeepers from organisations such as the United Nations and Save the Children itself have engaged in sexual abuse of children in the course of their humanitarian efforts. The study also says that many of these incidents remain unreported, and those involved often go unpunished.

The study was based on field data from Sudan, Ivory Coast and Haiti, where they held focus groups followed by in-depth interviews. In 20 of the 38 focus groups, United Nations representatives were the main perpetrators of sexual abuse, possibly due to the larger number of peacekeepers than aid workers, but 23 organisations were identified as being involved across the three countries. 
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon 
While 14 and 15 year olds were the most common victims, the study found cases of abuse in children as young as 6. Most offenders were men, and most of the victims were girls. One 14-year-old boy who works in a peacekeeping camp on the Ivory Coast told the study that "often it will be between eight and 10 men who will share two or three girls".

An "overwhelming" majority of those interviewed said they would never report a case of abuse, and did not know of anyone who had reported a case, despite more than half knowing of incidents of sexual abuse, and many knowing of 10 or more. The study reported that unless this silence was dealt with, any attempts to eliminate the abuse would be "fundamentally flawed".

In response to the study, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said that the organisation's policy on such abuse was "zero tolerance." The U.N. "will very carefully investigate and whenever there is necessary matters we will take necessary measures from this". Both Save the Children and the U.N. have pointed out that, while it does not reduce the seriousness of the offences, the offenders represent a small proportion of all peacekeepers and aid workers in foreign countries. As the U.N. does not have any prosecutory powers of its own, peacekeepers found to be involved in child sexual abuse are either fired or sent back to their home countries to face prosecution.