LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Girls as young as 11 were sexually abused and impregnated by U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti and abandoned to raise their children alone, according to testimonies from more than 2,000 residents.<\/p>\n
So many babies were fathered by foreign peacekeepers that Haitians nickname them \u2018Petit MINUSTAH\u2019 – combining \u2018small\u2019 in French with the acronym of the U.N. mission, said Sabine Lee, who co-led the study in the journal International Peacekeeping.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a multitude of cases, a multitude of different scenarios, in which these children are being conceived and born,\u201d Lee, a history professor at Britain\u2019s University of Birmingham, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is quite clear that girls that could clearly be understood and seen as underage were taken advantage of,\u201d she said, adding the study did not try to estimate how many children were born through sexual exploitation by peacekeepers.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for U.N. Peacekeeping said it took the issues raised seriously. It is supporting 29 victims and 32 children born of sexual exploitation and abuse by MINUSTAH personnel, and is \u201cactively engaged\u201d to ensure they get child support, he said.<\/p>\n
Under the current system, the U.N. can investigate crimes and send peacekeepers home but has no power to prosecute individuals.<\/p>\n
There have been multiple reports of sexual contacts – and several rape claims – involving peacekeepers in the 13-year mission to stabilize Haiti, which ended in 2017, following conflict and a devastating earthquake in 2010.<\/p>\n
Researchers interviewed more than 2,000 men, women and children who lived near U.N. bases about the experiences of women and girls during the mission.<\/p>\n
About 10% mentioned children fathered by peacekeeping personnel, though it was not clear how many were referring to overlapping cases.<\/p>\n
Their stories highlighted how extreme poverty led Haitian women and girls into often exploitative sexual encounters, the study found.<\/p>\n
Although some people discussed consensual relationships, many said vulnerable women sold sex for small amounts of money or food, and some also alleged sexual assaults.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey put a few coins in your hand to drop a baby in you,\u201d one young man was quoted as saying in the study, while one woman said peacekeepers impregnated girls of 12 and 13 and then \u201cleft them in misery with babies in their hands\u201d.<\/p>\n
The authors said the U.N.\u2019s rules on sexual relationships with local communities were \u201cineffective\u201d and peacekeepers should get better training and face stricter disciplinary action for sexual misconduct.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe training needs to go beyond, \u2018You cannot go and rape a woman\u2019,\u201d said Lee.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of the peacekeepers do not see themselves as abusing women … If they don\u2019t understand how powerful a position they are in, they will never understand what they do is actually wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Girls as young as 11 were sexually abused and impregnated by U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti and abandoned to raise their children alone, according to testimonies from more than 2,000 residents. So many babies were fathered by foreign peacekeepers that Haitians nickname them \u2018Petit MINUSTAH\u2019 – combining \u2018small\u2019 in French with the acronym of the U.N…. Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4070,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4067\/revisions\/4070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}