On the bookshelf in Rasna Warah’s home office are books about Mandela and Che Guevara. The 60-year-old Kenyan sits in his office chair and fights his own battle. She may look small and alone where she sits, but she is not alone. And she can’t be either, because her opponent can hardly be bigger. Warah is one of those who dedicates his life to fighting the UN. She believes that the way the organization is structured makes it easier for abusers to get away, and whistleblowers to be punished. For more than ten years, Warah was a proud UN worker. With education from Boston and Malmö, she had secured a good job in her hometown, at the UN agency UN-Habitat in Nairobi. But some of the people she met there, and not least the system she was a part of, turned Warah’s view of the UN upside down. – Hierarchical and misogynistic – A very misogynistic culture has developed, and the system is very hierarchical. So people get together and support the boss, and not the person who is being abused. She has used the corona pandemic diligently and recently came out with the book “Lords of impunity”. There she gives a quite different picture of the UN than what many people know from everyday media coverage. Rasna Warah worked for a long time for the UN. Now she works for the UN, from the home office in Nairobi. Photo: Vegard Tjørhom / news – The UN is not equipped to stop sexual abuse, says Warah, who believes that far too many of those who work at the UN are more concerned with protecting their own careers than reporting injustice. When news meets Rasna Warah, she is not surprised when she hears about the Norwegian officers who were stationed in South Sudan, and about whom news has written cases in recent weeks. She believes the case follows the same pattern as other similar cases in the UN system. The cases were dealt with quietly. And in this Norwegian case, they were never reported on to the UN operation in South Sudan either. No one received more punishment than reprimand, and two officers have later been given renewed trust and sent out on new missions. The Norwegians bought sexual services from local women, and several also had a sexual relationship with a locally appointed woman who lived in the Norwegian camp. – Peacekeeping soldiers often work in countries where women and children are not protected by social institutions, says Warah. Poor people can be exploited more easily Story of the Norwegian officers joining a series of cases where UN employees meet a society where poverty can lead to women selling sex in exchange for food and money. – It is often about young men who work in a context where women are vulnerable and often offer sex in exchange for food and money. There have been many sex-for-food scandals, says the author. Working as an envoy for the UN can quickly mean that you end up in places where you buy sexual services for small sums. Often because people have no other source of income than having to sell their bodies. Thus, what may seem like voluntary sex is not as voluntary as one might think. There are several cases of UN soldiers who have taken advantage of this, and in a far more serious way than the Norwegian officers. Sex ring in Haiti In exchange for food, a Haitian girl was lured into a sex ring. Soldiers from Sri Lanka had built up a network of people whom they exploited sexually. Many of them were children. A girl has told the UN’s own investigators that she hadn’t even started to develop breasts the first time she had sex with a UN soldier. One boy said that he sold sex to more than 100 soldiers, which was an average of four a day. UN soldiers from Sri Lanka at a ceremony in 2007 before they will travel to Haiti on a mission for the UN. It is not known whether the soldiers in the picture are involved in the sex scandal. Photo: SANKA VIDANAGAMA / AFP The whole thing went on for three years before the notification reached central parts of the UN. An investigation was started, 114 Sri Lankan soldiers were blamed for gross sexual abuse. The soldiers were sent back to Sri Lanka. The top management in the Sri Lankan defense denied the debts, and said there was no evidence. Neither the UN nor Haiti can prosecute UN soldiers, and it is not known whether any of the soldiers were punished in their home country. Six years later, new UN soldiers from Sri Lanka were sent back to Haiti. Swedish Kompass’s fight for change Swedish Anders Kompass worked high up in the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and had gained access to an internal report that French UN soldiers had committed abuses against children in the Central African Republic. But he was frustrated that no one took up the case, and that the report was only sent from desk to desk internally at the UN. So he leaked the report, and sent it to French prosecutors, in the hope that France would sort things out at home. It got a following. Most of all for Kompass, who was initially suspended, and who, after months of noise and pressure, resigned from his job at the UN. Swedish Anders Kompass met with great opposition when he reported on allegations of French UN soldiers abusing children in the Central African Republic. Photo: Moises Castillo / AP The case generated a lot of media attention, but in the legal system in France it was dismissed due to the lack of evidence. – It is irony of the highest order that human rights are violated internally in the UN, without any responsibility being taken. And there is no openness and transparency either. Often the tendency is for such matters to be covered up and denied, Warah believes. In his book, Warah tells of many whistleblowers who have met a wall when they try to speak out about something they think is wrong. And she has been in the same situation herself. – I was shocked to see how aggressively the UN is going against a whistleblower. No hearing will be held. The top rent fell on top of you like a ton of bricks. You have no choice but to get out of the building, as I did. Purchase of sexual services In addition to cases of abuse carried out by UN employees, and whistleblowers who are tried to be stopped, there are also cases from countries such as Congo, Mozambique, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, where UN soldiers have been involved . There have also been a number of cases where UN employees are guilty of buying sexual services while they are on duty. The Norwegian officers are an example from South Sudan, but there are many more. An example is a video from Tel Aviv in Israel in 2020. A car that was clearly marked with “UN” on the sides, you can see a woman and a man having sex with each other in the back seat. Another man is sitting in the front seat, apparently asleep. The woman must have been a prostitute. The video was spread on social media, and many believed that the video was an example of something that happens often, that UN employees buy themselves sex when they are out in the field for the UN. The two men were later suspended from their jobs, writes The Times of Israel. Have proposals for changes The UN has taken a number of measures after cases of sexual abuse have become known. Write reports, set up a supervisory body, carry out investigations and keep statistics on registered cases. But Warah believes that it is far from enough to stop the problem. She believes the organization is rigged in a way that will in any case lead to abusers escaping investigation and potential punishment. She has lost much of the faith she had in the UN. She believes that it is the most powerful states that control the entire organisation, and that they are not interested in a change. She has some suggestions for a solution. Change the UN charter – the UN constitution – so that UN employees do not have the same impunity as today. Get an end to the UN having to scrutinize itself, and bring in external people to scrutinize cases that are reported. Donor countries must stop giving money to UN agencies that are unable to protect whistleblowers and clean up the issues that are on the table. The UN Security Council must be expanded, so that a few countries do not sit with all the power. FN: – We know that much more needs to be done – In the last five years, we have initiated measures to prevent these mistakes, investigate the perpetrators, including the military, and hold those responsible. This may also mean that they will be sent back to their home country, says spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General Christian Saunders to news. He agrees with Warah that the impunity enjoyed by UN officials is part of the problem, but that the problem is not only limited to the UN, but also concerns the fact that many countries have a practice where sexual offenses are not punished well enough. Christian Saunders is a special envoy for the UN Secretary-General in the job of stopping sexual crimes in the UN. Here he greets former Foreign Minister Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide from the time he was head of the UN operation in Palestine. Photo: Heiko Junge / NTB Anyway. Stopping this is something that is very important to Secretary-General António Guterres, wrote the spokesperson to the UN chief. – We know that much more needs to be done, and that we intend to increase our efforts on this point, says Saunders, who does not rule out that there may also be new cases of abuse by UN staff in the future. The response from the UN is not enough for Warah to calm down. She believes that the organization still has a lot to answer for, including how they have treated Kompass and other whistleblowers. – As far as I know, there has been no form of compensation for the victims, and no peacekeeping soldier or UN official has been brought to justice, says Warah, who thus once again argues that the situation is not going to get better enough as long as the UN charter is not changed, so that UN employees can be punished if they commit abuse.
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– The UN are masters at covering up their own scandals – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
