180 U.N. personnel disciplined in 2 years

Since the beginning of 2004, nearly 180 soldiers, civilians and police in U.N. peacekeeping missions have been removed after sexual abuse inquiries, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Thursday.

Despite the United Nations’ “zero tolerance,” he said, “acts of sexual exploitation and abuse by U.N. peacekeeping personnel continue to occur.”

Since January 2004, the U.N. has investigated 319 peacekeeping personnel in all U.N. missions, Dujarric said.

“These resulted in the summary dismissal of 18 civilians and the repatriation on disciplinary grounds of 17 police and 144 military personnel,” he said.

About 80% of the estimated 100,000 people in the peacekeeping operations cannot be otherwise disciplined by the U.N. system, Dujarric said.

“They belong to the various troop-contributing countries, and we rely on those countries to discipline their personnel,” he said.

Dujarric was responding to a BBC investigation that said children had been raped and prostituted by U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti and Liberia.

The Haiti allegations dated from 2004, Dujarric said, and were not upheld by two U.N. investigations. The incident in Liberia reportedly took place Nov. 15, but he said the U.N. mission in Liberia had received no report in the last two months of any cases involving minors.