They begged and scavenged for food, but they never could scrape together enough to beat back the hunger, until the U. The men who came from a far-away place and spoke a strange language offered the Haitian children cookies and other snacks. Sometimes they gave them a few dollars. But the price was high: The Sri Lankan peacekeepers wanted sex from girls and boys as young as She told U. Sometimes she slept in U.
Justice for victims like V01 is rare. An Associated Press investigation of U. More than of the allegations involved children, the AP found, but only a fraction of the alleged perpetrators served jail time. Legally, the U. It has no jurisdiction over peacekeepers, leaving punishment to the countries that contribute the troops. The AP interviewed alleged victims, current and former U. With rare exceptions, few nations responded to repeated requests, while the names of those found guilty are kept confidential, making accountability impossible to determine.
Without agreement for widespread reform and accountability from the U. Here in Haiti, at least Sri Lankan peacekeepers exploited nine children in a sex ring from to , according to an internal U.
In the wake of the report, peacekeepers were sent home. None was ever imprisoned. In March, U. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced new measures to tackle sexual abuse and exploitation by U. But the proclamation had a depressingly familiar ring: More than a decade ago, the United Nations commissioned a report that promised to do much the same thing, yet most of the reforms never materialized. For a full two years after those promises were made, the children in Haiti were passed around from soldier to soldier.
And in the years since, peacekeepers have been accused of sexual abuse the world over. Khare also said the organization was working with member states to hold perpetrators to account. In one particularly grim case in Haiti, a teenage boy said he was gang-raped in by Uruguayan peacekeepers who filmed the alleged assault on a cellphone. Haitian lawyer Mario Joseph has been trying to get compensation for victims of a deadly cholera strain linked to Nepalese peacekeepers that killed an estimated 10, people.
