UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday recommitted the world body to "zero tolerance" of sexual exploitation and abuse by a minority of UN peacekeepers as he opened a high-level conference on the festering issue.
"Acts of sexual exploitation and abuse by both civilian and uniformed UN personnel continue," the outgoing secretary-general told a gathering of more than 100 senior leaders from the world body, NGOs, UN member states, academics and victim advocates.
"There have been crimes such as rape, pedophilia and human trafficking. My message of zero tolerance has still not got through to those who need to hear it -- from managers on the ground, to all our other personnel," he said.
However, he expressed his "tremendous pride in the admirable and upstanding behavior of the vast majority of UN peacekeepers serving around the world."
Annan, who is to step down at the end of the month to be succeeded by South Korea's former foreign minister Ban Ki-moon, said a key problem was the climate that makes it difficult to report and expose such abuses.
"This is unacceptable. We need to create an environment in which people feel able to report abuses without fear of retribution," he added.
Monday's conference at a hotel near UN headquarters in New York came close on the heels of a BBC expose that found allegations of child prostitution and rape involving the UN peacekeeping missions in Haiti and Liberia.
In an interview with the BBC last week, UN Assistant Secretary General for peacekeeping operations Jane Holl Lute conceded that the abuse reported in Haiti "is going on ... and I don't challenge the facts as they were presented."
She insisted, however, that the UN was working to deal with cases of abuse by peacekeepers, telling the broadcaster that the UN had "accepted our responsibility for dealing comprehensively with this."
On Monday, participants at the one-day conference approved a statement in which they reaffirmed their determination to prevent future acts of sexual exploitation and abuse by UN and NGO personnel.
They specifically committed themselves to implementing 10 key goals, including developing organization-specific strategies to deal with the problem, incorporating standards on induction materials and training courses for their personnel and preventing perpetrators of abuse from being "[re-] hired or [re-] deployed."
Other goals include taking appropriate action to "protect persons from retaliation" where allegations of sexual abuse are reported, to investigate allegations "in a timely and professional manner" and to provide "basic emergency assistance to complainants."
Last week, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric noted that 80 percent of the nearly 100,000 troops serving UN peacekeeping operations around the world could not be disciplined by the UN as they were answerable to troop-contributing countries.
"We are working very hard with troop-contributing countries to make sure people [abusers] who are sent back are disciplined," the spokesman then said.
Last August, the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo [MONUC] faced new allegations of "sexual exploitation of minors" by its peacekeepers.
It cited allegations about the existence of a major prostitution ring involving minors, close to a large concentration of Congolese soldiers and UN troops in South Kivu in the northeast of the country.
MONUC's reputation had already been sullied two years earlier by revelations that peacekeepers were involved in the sexual abuse of 13-year-old girls.
The UN then adopted a "zero tolerance" policy, including a "non-fraternization" rule that bars its peacekeepers from having sex with locals.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not