UN peacekeeping: not exactly the professionals needed for the Gap
■"In Congo War, Even Peacekeepers Add to Horror: Soldiers Used Money and Treats as Lures, Rape Victims Say," by Marc Lacey, New York Times, 18 December 2004, p. A1.
The UN's record on the Congo has always been so bad, so pathetic, so irrelevant, such a complete waste of time, that I have long thought nothing could possibly come down the pike to make it seem worse.
That something has arrived in the form of the UN's own internal auditing process uncovering the systematic sexual abuse of women by peacekeepers operating there over the past several years. Apparently, the blue helmets came on the scene, noticed the usual tricks of the trade being conducted there, and then simply joined in the party.
How often? Unicef says it's treated 2,000 victims of sexual abuse in the Bunia region in recent months, and that many of them involve peacekeepers. The UN itself owns up to at least 150 incidences involving their troops—so far.
No, Kofi shouldn't resign just because his kid takes bribes, nor for this either. He's such an incompetent symbol of such an incompetent system that both he and his well-deserved Nobel should be on display for as long as possible—if nothing else than as a reminder for how low this organization has fallen in the realm of security, which, BTW, was the entire raison d'etre for its creation following WWII.