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UN Peacekeepers Accused of Child Abuse in Sudan

The Daily Telegraph recently ran a report which accused United Nations peacekeepers to Sudan of sexually abusing children in the region, some as young as 12 years old. The article claimed that after the United Nations Mission in Southern Sudan unit arrived in the area to monitor the peace-keeping efforts after twenty years of war, the series of abuse began. The Daily Telegraph also published interviews with some of the victims.

The newspaper claims that the United Nations was aware of the sexual exploitation of minors in the area in 2005 already, based on an internal UN report that it managed to obtain. Jane Holl Lute, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping promised that the organization would take these allegations very seriously, even though she was aware that they were not new. "There could be truth. These environments are ones in which it is difficult to ascertain the truth,? Lute said.

According to reports and talks with some of the victims, it is alleged that members of the United Nations peacekeeping mission, military police and civilian staff members regularly enticed children with cash and gifts, abused them sexually and then left them at the roadside. The United Nations has 10,000 personnel in the Sudan region at one given time and Lute said that it was difficult to reinforce the UN?s code regarding sexual conduct when it was busy rotating 200,000 personnel in diverse regions of the world.