Campaigners have cast a harsh spotlight on the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (CAR), in which soldiers are accused of hundreds of sexual assaults on children and young women. Extremely disturbing revelations about the widespread abuse, and how it was enabled, implicate peacekeepers from over ten countries involved in the mission, named MINUSCA. The problem is wider than CAR however. A report released last June said at least 480 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse had been made between 2008 and 2013, with one third involving children.
Read part 1: The UN and its Whistleblowers – how did officials let it reach this point?
On Thursday 17th December, 2015 the External Independent Review Panel (the ‘CAR Panel’ for short) submitted its highly-anticipated report titled Taking Action on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Peacekeepers: Report of an Independent Review on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by International Peacekeeping Forces in the Central African Republic.
Alongside distressing details of the ordeal victims were put through at the hands of peacekeeper forces, the panel criticized systemic failures by UN personnel, pointing to a culture of impunity, flawed mechanisms to investigate reports and inadequate victim support structures, which worsened their marginalization. They provided 12 recommendations to tackle the issue moving forward, and said in no unclear terms: “the fact that the problem persists despite several expert reports commissioned by the UN over the last ten years only serves to exacerbate the perception that the UN is more concerned with rhetoric than action.”
“We want to ensure that what is being promoted in the media by the UN is actually more than PR exercises”
The growing conversation in the mainstream media, both print and television, as well as on social media is in part due to the work of Samantha Asumadu, Guilaine Kinouani and supporters of Media Diversified.
Driven by inaction over the CAR Panel’s 12 recommendations, the #PredatoryPeacekeepers campaign began a petition in April, which has gained 8,000 signatures so far. It demanded:
- That the 12 recommendations of the Independent Panel be recognized and implemented
- That the French government withdraw all its troops from CAR and investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of the horrific abuses of children
- Action to ensure victims receive proper care and support in rebuilding their future and prevent further abuse
The Leveller spoke to Guilaine Kinouani, one of the organizers of the campaign, about what drove her:
“The first thing was the invisibility of the victims and the alleged victims. Taking an intersectional look at their plight, considering that they were mainly children, black, African, poor and from the ‘Third World’ – all those axes of identity and oppression I felt meant their suffering was receiving very little attention. I think that perhaps the general public in Western countries have become quite desensitized to the suffering of African people. I do to some degree blame the kind of construction of black people generally and the images of African children in the media specifically. Also I am a black woman. I am a black woman of African descent, and I am a black woman of Congolese descent. So Congo, Brazzaville is also a country that has had its fair share of conflict and war so I felt that the issue, from a personal perspective, had a lot of resonance. I also want to say that as a black woman who is French, I also understand what it is like to be invisible. All those factors taken together made me want to do something and make some noise about the suffering of those children and vulnerable women.”
Media Diversified has been covering the story of sexual abuse by peacekeeper forces for some time. Kinouani pointed out that since the campaign was building, figures within the UN had engaged, both via Twitter and mainstream media such as in a BBC interview, with Media Diversified founder Samantha Asumadu and UN Deputy Special Representative in CAR, Diane Corner. This year also saw the passing of a resolution by the UN Security Council aimed at tackling allegations of abuse and repatriating military or police units “where there is credible evidence of widespread or systemic sexual exploitation or abuse.” France in particular has begun the process of moving its troops out of CAR, despite the deadline previously being set for the end of the year.
“People think this is something that can never change, that we will always be treated in this manner. That’s something that needs to be named and addressed”
A more subtle impact that Asumadu and Kinouani have noted is a shift in language. The same term they have used – ‘predator’ or ‘predatory’ – is now being adopted elsewhere. In the wake of increased pressure from the campaign and a wide number of articles covering the topic, stretching from the Guardian to the Canary, from Al Jazeera to the Mail Online, senior-level UN figures are making more promises of action. Kinouani felt that things are moving in the right direction but noted:
“It’s still very, very woolly… We’ve had over 8 thousand signatures in about six, seven weeks or so which is not insignificant and putting that in the context of what those eight thousand signatures have achieved I think we need to recognize that there has been some success, but it’s just the beginning and it’s a very fragile game. We want to ensure that what is being promoted in the media by the UN is actually more than PR exercises. Given the history of peacekeeper abuse, rape and even allegations of murder dating back to at least the 1990s if not earlier, I think it’s simply not good enough for the UN to be saying that they are handling the issue and working towards accountability and structural change and just providing very vague media/PR informed accounts or giving very, very broad responses.”
Discussions about the UN’s mismanagement of allegations continue, but behind these are the victims themselves. Moving forward, Kinouani stressed the importance of providing adequate support that is culturally appropriate and addresses the wider context:
“It’s very, very likely that most of the children and young women affected will suffer long-term negative consequences to their emotional well-being and psychological functioning if they do not get the support. We need to also bear in mind that a large proportion of those who have been abused have faced marginalization, many have been disowned by their families. So not only have they lost their dignity and their physical integrity, they are also at risk of living a life of marginalization and psychological distress if they are not provided with the support they need. We want to understand what is being given specifically – Who is providing the support, what does the support look like?”
Despite the campaigns achievements in widening the conversation and putting more pressure on the UN to act, there is a vital part of the debate surrounding the campaign among its drivers and supporters that has raised wider questions: over the position of black women within feminism; the challenges of campaigning on so-called African issues, where the lead is often taken by seemingly benevolent white faces; and the hierarchy of support, which can see the most vulnerable silenced at the bottom. Kinouani reflected on how these issues have affected the campaign:
“I kind of got into the campaign expecting that, perhaps naively, that we’d get a lot more support than we have had. I think I have to own up to that. There has been some disengagement from white feminists and also some undermining, publicly and privately as well which I think bring to the fore issues of racism and anti-blackness within feminism. I think there is an expectation that black women and marginalized groups generally need the “guiding hand” [not Guilaine’s own term] of white people to do anything productive. I think there’s been the implicit notion that we were not capable, that we were not professional or that we were not efficient enough to lead this campaign, which I think has been quite problematic.”
“Some campaigns that have been related to African issues have been led by white women and have had a lot of support. To some degree when white people are in the driving seat and when the face of the campaign is a white woman then it’s almost as if people find it easier to relate to the issue or feel that the campaign is being led adequately. The notion of black incompetence, the very subtle notion of black incompetence, I think, has played out in the issue.”
She gave a road-map of the dos and don’ts of solidarity, arguing that if concerns around the campaign are coming from a good place then what a person can do is quite simple:
“…you gather what expertise you think you have for the benefit of the campaign, for the benefit of the cause. If you think ‘you know what, I think I’ve got this asset, I think I’ve got this contact, I think I have this experience to push the issue forward’ then what you do is you make contact with people leading the campaign and say ‘I want to come on board, I want to do this, I want to do that, have you considered this or that?’ What you don’t do is undermine without actually adding anything productive. This takes me back to well, what is your motivation? Some of the issues its quite clear predate the campaign, I think there’s been old acrimonies that have been dumped on the campaign and people have used this opportunity essentially to attack Media Diversified and attack Sam. If the criticisms were about the campaign rather than individuals, everybody would be equally targeted.”
The issue of wider support has not solely been in the case of white feminists and mainstream media figures. The campaign had expected more momentum to come from people of the African diaspora but this turned out to be less than anticipated. Speaking on this issue, Kinouani said:
“We need also to ask ourselves some questions about respectability, about wanting to distance ourselves from the people who are at the bottom of the hierarchy of blackness and of humanity. I think generally there is something of an air of hopelessness or helplessness or powerlessness, even – where people think this is something that can never change, that we will always be treated in this manner. That’s something that needs to be named and addressed.”
“To me it’s quite saddening really to see that [the victims’] ordeal in terms of invisibility has almost been reproduced by the response we have obtained throughout the campaign. So in the same way that the victims in CAR have been completely disregarded, silenced because they were inconveniencing the UN, political arrangements or diplomatic processes, what we have seen in the response by white feminists and others is the issue is quite inconveniencing even when we spoke about it from afar, from the UK. That is quite saddening.”
The struggle is far from over. Senior UN figures are making more public promises to act, so now the campaign is pushing for much greater transparency, with specific information about the changes that are implemented, progress in relation to the CAR Panel’s 12 recommendations, and an action plan so victims and the public know where they stand.
“I think it’s quite important that the UN realize that to restore trust and faith in the UN and certainly peacekeeping there needs to be a thorough process whereby allegations, and investigations, are made available to the public and the actions that are taken as a result of the allegations are made transparent. The UN has pledged to do so but so far the information provided on their website has been again, quite vague with very few specific details on progress in relation to the implementing the CAR Panel’s recommendations or of prosecutions, so the public is largely in the dark. Ideally we would want this information regularly updated on the website. Ideally.”
The campaign’s success in increasing public pressure on the UN to act showed most recently in protesting the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers 14th Annual Conference in London. The gains so far have been made possible through the work of a relatively small group, but pushing the UN to prosecute those who are guilty and beginning the process of assisting victims in repairing their lives will need continued pressure from as many people as they can reach.
Sign and share the petition: https://community.avaaz.org/petitions/we-will-not-stand-by-when-un-soldiers-abuse-rape-and-murder?source=twitter-share-button
More information: http://predatorypeacekeepers.tumblr.com/
Image: MONUSCO Photos
