Gboyega Akinsanmi and Eddie Alegbe With Agency Report
28 May 2008
Lagos — Six-year-old children and above are currently facing sexual violence from peacekeepers and aid workers in Cote D'Ivoire and Sudan among others, a leading United Kingdom charity yesterday confirmed.
Save the Children, the charity organisation that just released a report on the plight of Children in the post-conflict states said children in post-conflict areas like Cote D'Ivoire among others "are being abused by the very people drafted into such zones to help look after them"
According to the recent report, after research in Cote D'Ivoire, Southern Sudan and Haiti, an international watchdog need be set up to arrest the plight of children in the hand of peacekeepers and aid workers.
The report also said it had sacked three workers for breaching its codes, and called on others to do the same. It said the three men were all dismissed in the past year for having had sex with girls aged 17, which the charity said was a sackable offence even though not illegal.
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) said the United Nations had welcome the charity's report, which it will study closely, but Save the Children said the most shocking aspect of child sex abuse is that most of it goes unreported and unpunished, with children too scared to speak out.
BBC said a 13-year-old girl, Elizabeth narrated how 10 UN peacekeepers gang raped her in a field near her Cote D'Ivoire home. Elizabeth said she was sexually violated, abused and harassed.
Quoted in the BBC report, Elizabeth said: "They grabbed me and threw me to the ground and they forced themselves on me. I tried to escape but there were 10 of them and I could do nothing. I was terrified. Then they just left me there bleeding."
But the charity's report stated that no definite action had been taken against the peacekeepers involved. The report also found that aid workers have been sexually abusing boys and girls.
Save the Children UK Chief Executive, Mr. Jasmine Whitbread said: "In recent years, some important commitments have been made by the UN, the wider international community and by humanitarian and aid agencies to act on this problem,"
"However, all humanitarian and peacekeeping agencies working in emergency situations, including Save the Children UK, must own up to the fact that they are vulnerable to this problem and tackle it head on," Whitbread said.
According to its report, after research involving hundreds of children from Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, better reporting mechanisms needed to be introduced to deal with what it called "endemic failures" in responding to reported cases of abuse.
It also said efforts should be made to strengthen worldwide child protection systems. But Save the Children's Cote D'Ivoire Country Director, Mr. Heather Kerr, says little is being done to support the victims.
Kerr added: "It is a minority of people but they are using their power to sexually exploit children and children that do not have the voice to report about this. They are suffering sexual exploitation and abuse in silence."
Save the Children said the international community had promised a policy of zero-tolerance to child sexual abuse, but that this is not being followed up by action on the ground.
United Nations spokesman, Mr. Nick Birnback, said that it was impossible to ensure "zero incidents" within an organisation that has up to 200,000 personnel serving around the world.
Birnback said: "What we can do is 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 that's occurred," he told the BBC.
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