adminNew York — Nelson Mandela’s widow, Graca Machel, joined prominent activists on Wednesday to call for a full inquiry on sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers and personnel following the furore over alleged child sexual assault by French troops in the Central African Republic. The campaign dubbed “Code Blue” is to demand change in the United Nations’ handling of sexual abuse allegations and hopes to enlist countries in a push for action.
Machel, who headed a UN study 19 years ago on the sexual abuse of children in conflict, lamented that “things have not changed, not improved.”
“They have gotten worse,” she told a news conference alongside former UN force commander Romeo Dallaire and other humanitarians.
Spearheaded by the non-governmental organisation Aids Free World, the group is demanding as a first step that there be an end to immunity afforded to UN personnel.
Paula Donovan, co-director of Aids Free World, insisted that while UN chief Ban Ki-moon had waived immunity in cases involving sexual crimes, the bureaucracy surrounding the procedure had delayed investigations. It was this immunity that allowed the United Nations to block French investigators from questioning UN rights officials who filed a report after interviewing children in the Central African Republic.
The children, among the tens of thousands of displaced people sheltering at a camp near the Bangui airport, testified that they were sexually abused in late 2013 by French soldiers in exchange for food.
French investigators were allowed to submit questions in writing to the UN authors of the report and received written replies, prompting Paris to open a formal investigation. “A commission of inquiry would show a speedy way of getting to the perpetrators,” said Machel. “It can be done.”
The United Nations has been under fire since the report on the sexual abuse of children by French, Chadian and Equatorial Guinean troops was leaked to the media last month. — AFP
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