Violating Peace

Sex, Aid, and Peacekeeping

Jasmine-Kim Westendorf

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781501748066
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Pace e sviluppo globale

Jasmine-Kim Westendorf's discomforting book investigates sexual misconduct by military peacekeepers and abuses perpetrated by civilian peacekeepers and non-UN civilian interveners. Based on extensive field research in Bosnia, Timor-Leste, and with the UN and humanitarian communities, Violating Peace uncovers a brutal truth about peacebuilding as Westendorf investigates how such behaviors affect the capacity of the international community to achieve its goals related to stability and peacebuilding, and its legitimacy in the eyes of local and global populations.

As Violating Peace shows, when interveners perpetrate sexual exploitation and abuse, they undermine the operational capacity of the international community to effectively build peace after civil wars and to alleviate human suffering in crises. Furthermore, sexual misconduct by interveners poses a significant risk to the perceived legitimacy of the multilateral peacekeeping project, and the UN more generally, with ramifications for the nature and dynamics of UN in future peace operations.

Westendorf illustrates how sexual exploitation and abuse relates to other challenges facing UN peacekeeping, and shows how such misconduct is deeply linked to the broader cultures and structures within which peacekeepers work, and which shape their perceptions of and interactions with local communities. Effectively preventing such behaviors is crucial to global peace, order, and justice. Violating Peace thus identifies how policies might be improved in the future, based on an account of why they have failed to date.

1

THE HISTORY AND NATURE OF SEXUAL MISCONDUCT IN PEACE OPERATIONS

In early 2018, the global humanitarian community was rattled by international media reports of aid workers hiring prostitutes and hosting sex parties in Haiti during the emergency response to the 2010 earthquake. As the story unfolded, it became apparent that some of the staff involved had previously been implicated in similarly inappropriate sexual behaviors in previous humanitarian deployments, including in conflict contexts. Moreover, after their dismissal from Oxfam, a number of them found work in other organizations also working with vulnerable populations in emergency and conflict zones.1

At the time of the incidents in Haiti, the humanitarian response to the earthquake was inextricably linked to the ongoing UN Stabilization Mission In Haiti (MINUSTAH), which had been deployed since 2004 in response to violence and instability in the country. MINUSTAH consistently experienced some of the highest number of reports of sexual exploitation and abuse in UN peacekeeping, including reports of transactional sex, sex with minors, and rape.2 MINUSTAH’s mandate included the restoration of a secure and stable environment, the promotion of formal political processes, the strengthening of Haiti’s governance institutions and rule of law, and the promotion and protection of human rights in the country.3 After the 2010 earthquake, the peace operation was also tasked with assisting the Haitian authorities and the humanitarian community in a response for affected communities. As a result, the distinction between peacekeepers deployed under a UN mandate and humanitarians deployed in response to the natural disaster was blurred—they worked in the same context, they were drawn from similar organizations, they worked closely together to serve the same affected communities, and, perhaps most important, the dynamics of their relationships with local communities were similar. This close association reinforces the importance of studying not only sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers but also the interlinked perpetration by the broader range of actors associated with a peace operation’s presence in a country. It also raises questions about whether the nature of such abuses perpetrated by peacekeepers, particularly military and police peacekeepers, differs significantly from those perpetrated by civilian interveners—including civilian peacekeepers, aid workers, and diplomats. Private security contractors add a layer of complexity to this mix, sitting as they do between the uniformed and civilian sectors.

The Oxfam scandal raised another important issue, namely, which behaviors are considered to fall under the category of sexual exploitation and abuse and what role consent plays in determining this, particularly when adults are involved. The sexually inappropriate behaviors in this particular case included purchasing sex from adult women who were working as prostitutes. There was speculation that some of the women may have been underage; the Oxfam investigation was unable to substantiate that allegation, but noted that the possibility could not be completely ruled out.4 Such transactional sex, even when it involves consenting adults, breaches the UN and humanitarian community’s codes of conduct relating to sexual exploitation and abuse, but it is not necessarily criminal—that depends on the regulation of prostitution within the host state’s legal frameworks.5 This adds another level of conceptual and practical difficulties in understanding and responding to sexual exploitation and abuse: the behaviors the category encompasses are varied, only some are criminal, they involve radically different levels of consent, and it can be difficult to substantiate allegations because of the contexts into which peace operations are deployed.

This chapter revolves around these complexities, aiming to untangle the nature of sexual misconduct in peace operations, the ways in which different groups of interveners perpetrate it, and the factors that contribute to its perpetration in peace operations. I begin by briefly tracing the history of sexual exploitation and abuse in peace operations before delineating a typology of sorts that distinguishes between four main types of behavior that fall under the category of sexual exploitation and abuse. This is crucial to the study of how such behaviors affect the international community’s capacity to achieve its peacebuilding goals and why policy responses have largely failed to date. I then discuss the causal and contextual factors that underpin the perpetration of sexual exploitation and abuse and consider the interconnections between the abuses by interveners, conflict-related sexual violence, and sexual harassment and abuse perpetrated within the international intervener community. Finally, I will look in greater detail at the issue of sexual misconduct by civilian interveners. To date, the majority of data and analysis has focused on uniformed peacekeepers, despite the fact that civilian peacekeepers are more responsible per capita for allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse in peace operations and despite growing awareness of the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and abuse within intervener communities. Understanding this particular element of the puzzle is critical to developing a comprehensive understanding of the nature, causes, and consequences of sexual exploitation and abuse in peace operations.

Sexual Exploitation and Abuse: A Brief History

Sexual exploitation and abuse first emerged as an issue in peace operations during the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) in 1993, when the number of prostitutes in the country grew from six thousand before the UN arrived to more than twenty-five thousand in 1993.6 The widespread use of prostitutes by UN personnel involved violence and the sexual abuse of girls, with some women reporting that “UNTAC customers could be more cruel” than Cambodian customers at brothels.7 In fact, a group of women working in brothels wrote to the UN complaining about this and requesting that the UN ask peacekeepers to behave less violently in the future. Although the exact scale of peacekeeper involvement in sexual exploitation and abuse in Cambodia is impossible to know, some data sheds light on its prevalence: a Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) survey found that 45 percent of Dutch navy and marines personnel deployed to UNTAC had sexual contact with sex workers or other members of the local population during their five-month deployment and did not use condoms consistently.8 At the time, the UN response to the growing problem of peacekeeper participation in sexual exploitation and abuse was threefold: the head of mission, Yasushi Akashi, dismissed the significance of the issue, declaring that “boys will be boys”; mission leadership advised peacekeepers not to wear uniforms when visiting brothels nor to park UN vehicles directly outside; and an additional eight hundred thousand condoms were shipped to the country to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS among UN personnel.9

In 1995, the issue of peacekeeper misconduct was again brought to international attention, this time in relation to Bosnia-Herzegovina, where evidence emerged first of the trafficking of women to work as sex slaves in brothels frequented by UN mission personnel, including peacekeepers and particularly American DynCorp private contractors working within the mission; and later, of the complicity of interveners in this trafficking, including the purchase of women and girls as young as twelve as sex slaves.10 These behaviors came on the back of years of UN peacekeepers engaging in transactional sex with Bosnian women during the war.11 Nevertheless, it was not until 1999 that the negative media and rising public attention prompted the UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to pursue policy responses to address the problem—suggesting that the UN was reluctant to acknowledge and address the involvement of peacekeepers in trafficking.12 Once underway, the UN response failed to provide adequate protection to victims and adopted a more limited definition of trafficking than that set out under international law, excluding women who were aware that they would work as prostitutes upon arrival in Bosnia and only including those who were not.13 These women were therefore excluded from any protections or support services; in fact, the two gender advisors in UNMIBH and the International Police Task Force (IPTF) who made determinations of trafficking status until 2001 referred to these women as “migrant prostitutes” and suggested to Human Rights Watch that the UN had no responsibilities towards them.14

Shortly thereafter, attention turned to West Africa, where independent consultants raised the alarm that staff from the UN and from NGOs had been abusing and exploiting local women and girls in refugee camps in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. A subsequent UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) investigation in 2001 verified that sexual misconduct among aid workers was prevalent, documenting, for instance, the sexual relationship between a UN civilian staff member and a seventeen-year-old refugee in exchange for school fees, the violent rape of girls by NGO staff in refugee camps, the rape of boys by UN peacekeepers in Sierra Leone, the exchange of sex for food provided by NGO staff, and the refusal of international staff to take responsibility for children they had fathered with local women and girls.15 In his statement releasing the report, Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared that

sexual exploitation and abuse by humanitarian staff cannot be tolerated. It violates everything the UN stands for. Men, women and children displaced by conflict or other disasters are among the most vulnerable people on earth. They look to the UN and its humanitarian partners for shelter and protection. Anyone employed by or affiliated with the UN who breaks that sacred trust must be held accountable and, when the circumstances so warrant, prosecuted.16

In response, the general assembly adopted a resolution “expressing its grave concern at incidents of sexual exploitation and abuse against vulnerable populations” and directing the secretary-general to extend remedial and preventive measures to all peace and humanitarian operations, to ensure that reporting and investigative procedures are in place in all such operations, and to maintain data on sexual exploitation and abuse. It “encouraged” all UN bodies and NGOs to do the same.17 The secretary-general consequently issued the 2003 bulletin, which outlined a zero tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse for all UN staff and the duties of mission leadership in holding perpetrators accountable, including through referring cases to national authorities for criminal prosecution. This is also known as the zero tolerance bulletin or policy, and it promulgated six specific standards:

(a) Sexual exploitation and sexual abuse constitute acts of serious misconduct and are therefore grounds for disciplinary measures, including summary dismissal;

(b) Sexual activity with children (persons under the age of 18) is prohibited regardless of the age of majority or age of consent locally. Mistaken belief in the age of a child is not a defence;

(c) Exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex, including sexual favours or other forms of humiliating, degrading or exploitative behaviour, is prohibited. This includes any exchange of assistance that is due to beneficiaries of assistance;

(d) Sexual relationships between United Nations staff and beneficiaries of assistance, since they are based on inherently unequal power dynamics, undermine the credibility and integrity of the work of the United Nations and are strongly discouraged;

(e) Where a United Nations staff member develops concerns or suspicions regarding sexual exploitation or sexual abuse by a fellow worker, whether in the same agency or not and whether or not within the United Nations system, he or she must report such concerns via established reporting mechanisms;

(f) United Nations staff are obliged to create and maintain an environment that prevents sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. Managers at all levels have a particular responsibility to support and develop systems that maintain this environment.18

It also mandated that all non-UN entities or individuals working in cooperation with the UN accept and implement those standards of behavior as a condition of their cooperative arrangement. The zero tolerance policy has been a cornerstone of sexual exploitation and assault policy ever since, albeit hotly contested on the basis of its treatment of consent between adults (all transactional sex is prohibited, regardless of whether it involves consenting adults) and its implications for understanding the agency of local women involved (all sexual relationships between peacekeepers and locals are strongly discouraged—but not prohibited—because of the unequal power dynamics, even if they are not sexually abusive or exploitative).19 These tensions have significant implications for the implementation of the policy on the ground in peace operations and for its credibility among intervener communities, which will be revisited in chapter 6. During interviews, some respondents argued that the incoherence and inexactitude of the policy with regards to consensual adult relationships results in some staff treating the rest of the policy as equally flawed.

These early examples reveal some key characteristics of sexual exploitation and abuse in peace operations: the pervasiveness of such behaviors and the prevalence of abuse against children; the variety of behaviors involved, only some of which are criminal; the involvement of both uniformed and civilian UN peacekeepers as well as private contractors, aid workers, and others associated with peace operations; and the failure of policy responses to prevent sexual misconduct despite significant efforts. These themes will recur throughout this book.

A Typology of Bad Behavior

The data available on sexual exploitation and abuse perpetrated by interveners suggests that the range of misconduct is diverse, encompassing opportunistic sexual abuse, transactional sex, networked sexual exploitation, and extremely violent or sadistic attacks. It also suggests that acts of abuse and exploitation are driven by a range of different motivating and permissive factors. As a result, it is useful to analyze sexual exploitation and abuse in terms of the way individual cases involve cash and other material resources, the extent to which they have been planned or involve a number of perpetrators, and whether they are linked to larger criminal networks. It is also useful to understand those actions that are criminal in contrast to those that are not. By distinguishing the different types of behaviors that the general category encompasses, it is possible to better understand the form and function of specific instances of sexual exploitation and abuse and identify those factors that either cause such actions or create the context in which they occur.

As Kate Grady’s study of UN data collection on allegations of sexual misconduct demonstrated, the UN has abandoned and developed new taxonomies of sexual exploitation and abuse on an annual basis, which has made tracking trends or using the data for analysis virtually impossible.20 This highlights the need for robust categories that are broad enough to be useful in understanding the nature and dynamics of the abuses that occurred. Understanding the different forms sexual exploitation and abuse takes and the factors and motivators that give rise to them is crucial to understanding the varying impacts it has on peacebuilding outcomes. It is also essential to understanding why policy responses to date have failed to effectively prevent such behaviors or hold perpetrators accountable. Those policies have tended to characterize sexual exploitation and abuse as one form of misconduct perpetrated on an individual basis, rather tha...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The History and Nature of Sexual Misconduct in Peace Operations
• 2. Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Bosnia and Timor-Leste
• 3. Making Matters Worse: The Long-Term Impacts of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
• 4. Legitimacy in Crisis: The Impacts of Sexual Misconduct on Capacity and Credibility
• Conclusion: One Problem among Many? An Integrated Response to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index