Who will watch the watchmen?

The harm that is done by people sent to do good

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ORGANISATIONS that send peacekeepers and aid workers to dangerous places are usually concerned about their envoys' physical safety. But an uglier concern has recently surfaced: how to ensure the moral integrity of people who are supposed to be helping others.

A report this week by the British branch of Save the Children, an aid organisation, underlines the problem. In a study carried out last year in three places with a strong international presence—southern Sudan, Haiti and Côte d'Ivoire—the charity said it had found widespread sexual abuse of children, some as young as six, by aid workers and, above all, by UN peacekeepers. More than half the 250 boys and girls aged 10-17 it interviewed said they knew of such cases. But the abuse remained “widely underreported”, it said, because most children were too frightened to come forward.

Sadly, the report tells a familiar tale. The UN in particular has been plagued by sex scandals among its peacekeepers in recent years. After a particularly shocking series of rapes by Nepalese blue-helmets in Congo in 2003, Kofi Annan, then UN secretary-general, set up a committee of inquiry. Its damning findings of “repeated patterns” of rape and other sexual abuse by peacekeepers prompted Mr Annan to announce three years ago a policy of “zero tolerance” for such crimes for all the 200,000 or so personnel, civilian and military, who are employed by the UN and its agencies around the world.

The world body has always banned its staff in the field from having sex with prostitutes or anyone under the age of 18. It also “strongly discourages” sexual relations even with consenting adults in the host population. “Conduct and discipline” teams have now been set up in each of the UN's 17 peacekeeping missions, along with an overarching special unit at its headquarters in New York, to help eradicate the scourge. In addition, since 2005 all new peacekeepers have been required to undergo training to prevent sexual exploitation before being sent to the field.

But the abuse continues, seemingly unabated. Following the scandal in Congo, there have been serious incidents of alleged rape of civilians by blue-helmets every single year—in Burundi (2004), Sudan (2005), Haiti (2006), Liberia (2006) and Côte d'Ivoire (2007). Last year the UN received 748 allegations of misconduct by its peacekeepers, 127 of which involved sexual exploitation and abuse. Most, if not all, will be investigated. But few are likely to lead to convictions or sanctions.

For when it comes to its blue-helmets, the UN finds itself in a bind. Although it can, and does, investigate any serious complaints against them, it has no jurisdiction over the alleged culprits. Only their home states have the authority to try and punish them. Most peacekeeping troops come from the developing world—Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Jordan, Nigeria, Nepal and Ghana are the biggest contributors—and many prefer to sweep such incidents under the carpet. All the UN can do is to dismiss them and recommend their repatriation. As all peacekeeping troops enjoy absolute legal immunity, the host country cannot do anything either.

Civilian police attached to such missions are a different matter. Like other non-local UN civilian staff in the field, they enjoy only qualified immunity—for actions committed in the course of their official functions. Rape and the abuse of minors would not fall into that category, of course. So such crimes could, in theory, be prosecuted locally. In practice, however, this is unlikely, as the kind of countries to which blue-helmets are sent have either appalling justice systems, or non-existent ones. Besides, finding witnesses willing to speak and assembling sufficient evidence are often virtually impossible in such chaos.

Aid agencies and other NGOs are subject to different laws again. Their foreign-based workers have no immunity in the host country. If they come from civil-law countries, like France, they may be prosecuted—though with great difficulty—back home. Citizens of common-law states, like Britain and most old Commonwealth states, cannot usually be prosecuted at home for crimes committed abroad, but they can be for sex offences.

Most NGOs have codes of conduct, under which the purchase of sexual favours, let alone actual abuse, is strictly banned. But the toughest penalty they can impose is dismissal. Save the Children UK recently sacked three workers for having sex with girls of 17, which, though not illegal, breached its code.

The charity now wants an international watchdog to tackle abuse. How it can succeed where the UN has failed is unclear. One of the biggest problems is not just the unwillingness of victims to complain, but their ignorance of their basic rights. What is needed, suggests Françoise Hampson, a professor of international law, is a campaign to inform the locals of their rights, along with an easily accessible complaints procedure. But in a huge, chaotic place like Congo, that's a tall order.

Another way to improve the present system, she says, would be to require heads of mission to investigate any allegations of wrongdoing at the first whisper, rather than waiting for a formal complaint. She also proposes that the agreements drawn up between the UN and troop-contributing nations be modified to oblige the state at least to tell the UN what it has done to punish wrongdoers.

The UN has been trying to strengthen its procedures. Under a revised “model memorandum of understanding” adopted last year, governments are now explicitly required “to bring the full force of their legal sanctions to bear” to enforce the UN's standards of conduct. What that will mean in practice has yet to be seen. But at least investigation procedures have improved. Upon notification of a case of serious misconduct, the UN now not only informs the country concerned, but also invites it to investigate the incident in co-operation with its own Office of Internal Oversight Services. The new arrangement was applied for the first time to alleged abuse by Sri Lankan peacekeepers in Haiti last year. Over 100 soldiers now face court-martial.

Deeming the new report “deeply disturbing”, Nick Birnback, the UN's spokesman for peacekeeping, said it was impossible to ensure “zero incidents” in such a big organisation. “What we can do is to get across a message of zero tolerance, which for us means zero complacency when credible allegations are raised, and zero impunity when we find that there has been malfeasance,” he said. That would indeed be a useful start.

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