UN's Lack of Women in Iraq and Darfur, Sexual Abuse Cases Unanswered by UN Gender Advisers

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, January 18 -- While preaching gender balance, the UN's peacekeeping operation in Iraq has 230 troops and military observers, all of them men. According to the UN's own statistics at the end of 2007, the mission in Afghanistan was all men, as was the UNAMID mission in Darfur, and the incipient mission in Chad. Click here for the UN table, in which UNAMA is Afghanistan and UNAMI is Iraq.

            Despite the statistics, there are stories to tell. As the UN deploys its MINURCAT peacekeeping operation to Chad and the Central African Republic, it is intending that the police stations it sets up in refugee camps will have separate rooms to deal with sexual violence, and hoping to staff these rooms with female personnel. This goal, and not the underlying statistics, was the subject of a press conference Friday at the UN, at which four gender advisors from the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations gave examples of their work. Afterwards, reporters' questions were mostly about the problem of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers themselves. The UN gender advisors said that they don't work on that problem, and the press was told to direct its questions to the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services, which issues reports on investigations, but most often confidentially.

   In Haiti, for example, one-tenth of a contingent of peacekeepers from Sri Lanka were sent home, charged with buying sex from under-aged girls. Inner City Press asked the gender advisor of the UN's mission in Haiti, Nadine Puechguirbal, what has happened with the Sri Lankan peacekeepers. Video here, from Minute 36:43. Ms. Puechguirbal did not answer the question, but rather spoke of advice the UN gives to governments. Inner City Press followed up, asking if the DPKO advisors when they preach on gender issues aren't asking about sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers themselves. This question was not answered either.

UN in Haiti, women not shown, sexual abuse repatriation not updated on

            The question arises, what did DPKO think reporters questions were going to be about? The gender advisers, one is sure, intend to do good work. Even at a recent briefing by the head of OIOS, Inga-Britt Ahlenius, sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers was a major topic, and many questions were explicitly left answered. So when DPKO holds briefing on gender, it is foreseeable that these will be the questions. Why weren't they answered? Ah, communications...

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These reports are also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

  Because a number of Inner City Press' UN sources go out of their way to express commitment to serving the poor, and while it should be unnecessary, Inner City Press is compelled to conclude this installment in a necessarily-ongoing series by saluting the stated goals of the UN agencies and many of their staff. Keep those cards, letters and emails coming, and phone calls too, we apologize for any phone tag, but please continue trying, and keep the information flowing.

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Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.

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