UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations is investigating about 150 allegations of sexual abuse by U.N. civilian staff and soldiers in the Congo, some of them recorded on videotape, a senior U.N. official said on Monday.Kofi Annan, in the best UN doublespeak makes his position crystal clear and is quoted at the end of this article:
The accusations include pedophilia, rape and prostitution, said Jane Holl Lute, an assistant secretary-general in the peacekeeping department.
Lute, an American, said there was photographic and video evidence for some of the allegations and most of the charges came to light since the spring.
"I have long made it clear that my attitude to sexual exploitation and abuse is one of zero tolerance, without exception, and I am determined to implement this policy in the most transparent manner," Annan said.
But the reality between Mr. Annan’s words and deeds lays bare the bold-faced hypocrisy of the Secretary-General of the UN. It was just a little under a month ago when the news broke that Kofi Annan cleared Ruud Lubberg, UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees from charges of sexual harassment despite an internal inquiry that backed the victim.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was embroiled in a new scandal yesterday after it emerged that he cleared a top official of sexual harassment despite an internal inquiry which backed the victim’s claims.Canada’s contribution to the United Nations General budget is approximately Cdn$53.1 million with an additional Cdn$77.8 million paid for peacekeeping contributions.
Annan cleared Ruud Lubbers in July after a woman on his staff claimed she had been groped by the ageing Dutch former foreign minister, who has been the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva since 2001.
But red-faced UN officials were forced to admit yesterday that an investigation by the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), an internal watchdog, had backed the unnamed woman’s allegations in a report to Annan.
2 comments:
I'd like to see any kind of a run-down or a list of successful UN "Peacekeeping" activities over the past ten years, has there been any that can be called a sucess? Rwanda? Kosovo? Palestine? The UN proxies keep spending money like a drunken sailor, with results that are marginal, and minimally effective - couldn't that money just go directly to the people involved, to settle those disputes?
Peacekeeping is a bit of an oxymoron and I think you would have to go back farther than 10 years to find a successful UN Peacekeeping intervention - if there has ever really been one - the most it seems that the UN Peacekeeping forces can do is delay the inevitable.
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