THB for sexual exploitation and Peace Operations

During Bosnia and Herzegovina’s armed conflict between 1992 and 1995, many women and girls[1] were subjected to serious forms of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA).[2] Human rights investigator David Lamb says that “The sex slave trade in Bosnia largely exists because of the UN (United Nations) peacekeeping operation. Without the peacekeeping presence, there would have been little or no forced prostitution in Bosnia.”[3] This delineates a strong cause-effect relationship between the sexual exploitation and abuse of victims by peacekeepers and the drastic rise in human trafficking in the same area.

 

Correlation between the increase in human trafficking and arrival of peacekeepers.

The strong relationship between human trafficking and complex international operations did not commence once the UN started sending its troops abroad. The link between the two can be traced back to Ancient Rome, when Generals would require sexual services during their military operations.[4] This would inevitably and indirectly incentivize third parties to traffic women in order to meet the military’s demand. More recent examples include the Second World War, the Vietnam War, and the Korean War, where request for transactional sex was significantly high. In certain cases, such as in Vietnam, the activity was well structured, to the point where the US military medical teams would inspect prostitute’s health and wellbeing in order for them to carry out their services. The end of WWII marked the beginning of a new international community, united together with the common goal of maintaining peace and security.

Currently, the U.N. has 12 active peacekeeping operations. Half of them are based in Africa, the others in the Middle East, in Kosovo and South Asia. As of 31 October 2021, the UN reports that there were 65,579 military personnel, 7,694 police personnel, and 1,165 uniformed experts on mission.[5]

            The first great instance of peacekeeper’s request for sexual services was noticed in a 1992 operation in Somalia, followed by one the same year in Cambodia, then in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Eritrea in the early 2000s.1 Regarding the mission in Cambodia, in fact, it is estimated that the number of prostitutes more than quadrupled after the arrival of peacekeepers.[6]

Among the many missions in which a great increase in human trafficking post troop deployment was recorded, the one in Kosovo was particularly significant. By August 1999, 50,000 troops had been deployed, composed of the Kosovo Protection Force (KFOR) with NATO peacekeepers and the Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) with UN peacekeepers, in order to ensure the safety of the civilian population and administer the demilitarization of the KLA and the Serb regiment. This massive injection of UN personnel inevitably increased prostitution rates together with trafficked women and girls. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch conducted studies that demonstrated a massive increase in the inflow of trafficked humans in Kosovo, and at least 80 percent of the clients demanding their services were not from Kosovo. A year later a police unit created for tackling human trafficking and prostitution was established by the UNMIK. The efficacy of this police unit is still contested. However, the cause-effect link between the arrival of peacekeeping troops and the almost tenfold increase in exploited women between 1999 and 2003 likely created by a spike in trafficked women cannot go unnoticed.[7]

A surge in trafficked humans was also recorded in 1999 when troops from the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) were deployed, in order to disarm fighters and maintain stability for civilians whilst attempting to provide government services, reaching a total of 13,000 troops the year later. Because of this substantial increase in peacekeepers, prostitution rates also skyrocketed, especially in the country’s capital. The UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and U.K. Save the Children collaborated on an investigation which found that women were being trafficked from Liberia and Guinea into Sierra Leone, to appease the peacekeeper’s demands. The UNHCR explained that UN troops were paid a large amount of money in comparison to local wages, making both supply and demand more accessible. The UN recognized this as an issue and vowed to emend it.

“The modern scourge of human trafficking is driven by a number of supply and demand pressures related to the global economy.”[8] As Keith Allred correctly notes, human trafficking is all about supply and demand. Peacekeepers create demand for sexual services, and therefore traffickers see this as an opportunity to expand their market and traffic human beings near the location where the peacekeepers will be. Not only is it an easy source of revenue for traffickers, but its relatively low risk primer acts as a further stimulus.[9] This can be seen through the incredible rise of prostitutes available whenever new peacekeeping troops are deployed.

The UN is aware of the problem and has tried to take the appropriate countermeasures to tackle it. In 2005, at the request of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, “A Comprehensive Strategy to Eliminate Future Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations” (also known as the Zeid Report) was created. The report has both formed the basis for action by the Security Council and General Assembly and paved the way for some of the reforms already implemented.[10] In fact, the United Nations together with the international community have tried to take more concrete steps towards solving the issue. The sensitization to sexual exploitation and abuse of victims by peacekeepers has come a long way since UNTAC’s Head of Mission Yasuki Akashi’s quite symbolic remark on the UN soldier’s exploitation of prostitutes “boys will be boys.” In merely 20 years a strict Zero-Tolerance policy has been established, showing a remarkable effort and dedication on behalf of the UN to eradicate this issue. However, this strict sensitization has not exactly proved to be as effective as expected. In fact, a relatively recent study by Bernd Beber et al. conducted on Liberian women in 2016 concluded that for every additional troop that was sent from the UN, there was a consequent increase in the probability of a woman becoming involved in transactional sex for the first time.[11] The study randomly selected 475 women within 1,381 households in Liberia and asked them a series of questions which they answered to anonymously. Over 75 per cent of these women had been involved in sexual activity with UN personnel. While a lack of data, and especially a reluctance of providing data on behalf of the UN, limits the extent to which this issue can be researched, understood, and addressed, studies like these ones demonstrate that the issue has not been eradicated, if not even worsened.

 

Unclear distinction between SEA and consensual sexual relations

Among the possible reasons hindering the solution to the problem lies an unclear distinction between SEA and consensual sexual relations. In particular, UN defines sexual exploitation as “Any actual or attempted abuse of position of vulnerability, differential power or trust, for sexual purposes”[12]. All peacekeepers must refrain from carrying out any act of a sexual nature with the local population (albeit stated in an oblique way, as in theory having affairs with locals is “strongly discouraged” but not forbidden).[13] This ambiguous policy thus prohibits them to even have consensual sexual relations, including the so-called “solicitation of a prostitute” also referred to as “transactional sex.”[14] UN regulations, implemented in order to maintain an organized and safe mission in an area of conflict, focus on the concepts of respect, integrity, and morality. However, it can be argued that many of these concepts are based on criteria that are alien to many peacekeepers, belonging to cultures and countries in which social norms still do not recognize certain inalienable principles that apparently the UN gives for granted. In the Western world, although there is still some work to be done, females theoretically have the same rights and opportunities that men do. In cultures of the developing world such as Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, women are still upholding their conventional role and are not granted rights which are considered inalienable to our everyday life. The UN’s Conduct in UN Field Mission website shares a table of SEA allegations (2015 onwards). Of the thirty-one allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation (which seem very few, however we need to take into consideration how hard it is for victims to seek help), only nineteen nationalities are identified. All of these nineteen identified nationalities belong to developing countries, such as Cameroon, Senegal, DRC, Burundi, and so on.[15] In all of these countries gender inequality is stagnant, and the idea of respect is interpreted very differently compared to the way the Western world interprets it. Further, the U.N’s  Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) explains how some troops deployed by certain states have more allegations against them than other troops from different states do.[16] In other words, many of these offenses were perpetrated as a result of being accustomed to an environment where it is acceptable to rape or exploit women’s bodies. Therefore, a zero-tolerance policy will not change a lifetime view of women as sexual objects. In order to change these dynamics, further research is necessary as a first step.

Furthermore, the aggregation within the same definition (SEA) of acts of enormously different behavioral, moral and, ultimately, penal value is proving to be an insolvable problem. Peacekeepers having consensual sex (even if transactional sex) should not be dealt with in the same way as peacekeepers having abused a local boy or girl are. Zero tolerance should be applied to those who abuse and commit serious crimes. For those who are merely satisfying an inescapable human instinct, further research should be carried out to really understand the difference between an exploitative and non-exploitative sexual relation, and whether it deserves punishment as to remodel a policy that acknowledges a basic, manifest human instinct and regulates it instead of forbidding it. Further, the UN should place more emphasis on the investigative procedures and personnel they already have in place to intercept the serious offenses, focusing the investigative and preventive capacity of the UN police.

 

Optimization of UNPOL capacities

Peacekeepers must be the solution, not the problem. United Nations Police (UNPOL) should be explicitly tasked to carry out more thorough investigations on THB for sexual exploitation, and monitor the situation more closely, as to also detect any pattern of corruption which is very likely in areas of conflict or post-conflict. The findings of these investigations could lead to dismantle Organised Crime Groups that are also involved, as it frequently happens, in other serious crimes, such as the smuggling of arms, drugs, and other licit or illicit commodities into the same area of conflict and post-conflict in which peacekeeping forces are deployed to. The trafficking of persons, and in particular prostitutes, may contribute in financing the payment of arms, military equipment and personnel, thus creating a vicious cycle where more peacekeepers are needed to maintain peace and security leading to even more SEA, and ultimately leading to an even greater demand for sexual services increasing human trafficking.[17] The Zeid Report invokes the use of technical investigations of the highest level such as DNA testing to establish whether a Peacekeeper was in any way involved with a prostitute. However, the controversy lies in the fact that nothing is said of investigations aimed at identifying who has kidnapped that same prostitute, raped, and thrown her out on the street to be violently exploited. UNPOL should be given power and all possible technical and specialized support to fight Organised Crime Groups involved in THB.

A more adequate and educational training system for the troops

The Zeid Report sheds light on how inadequate training has been one of the major causes of Peacekeepers SEA. Training should not only improve in quantity but also in quality. Technically, according to UN regulation, all Member States must vet their troops through a pre-deployment training within their territory. Very often however this pre-deployment training consists in a few words at the airport or doesn’t exist at all because of a lack of will and resources. This lack of pre-deployment training is in fact evident in the peacekeeper’s questions and actions during their training sessions abroad, through many courses such as the Protection of Civilians. Therefore, more investigations should be conducted on whether the states carry out these pre-deployment trainings in an appropriate way, with particular focus on SEA.

Take into consideration different gender roles in different cultures

If more focus is placed upon understanding whether there is variation in the amount of sexual misconduct of different T/PCC, then the behaviors and attitudes of these troops may be identified as well as factors that would make it more probable for them to take part in sexual misconduct. Consequently, the UN may decide to suspend the deployment of troops from specific states (suspending the financing as well) until the troops get more adequate training, at least in the short-term. In the longer term, it is good to invest in these specific state’s economies and infrastructure as to increase the modernization process and hopefully gradually change the way women are viewed.

Concluding remarks

There has been an incongruence of the approach taken to tackle SEA in UN peacekeeping, with strict and absolute policies and frameworks that neglect to consider part of the essence of the issue. A peacekeeper who solicits a prostitute or creates a consensual relationship with a local girl cannot be criminalized at the same level as one who rapes, exploits, and sexually abuses. The issue of human trafficking as both a consequence and a cause adds another dimension to this dynamic. As we have seen in the instances of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, and others, the increased number of deployed troops and consequently an increased request for sexual services inevitably leads to a growth in the number of trafficked persons to supply that demand. While it is known that peacekeeping helps maintain a peaceful environment reducing violence, if the international community continues to “tighten the screw” without placing effort in trying to eradicate the problem, the whole purpose of a peacekeeping mission may be lost as new problems are introduced into post-conflict environments that will worsen conditions instead of ameliorating them. It is imperative for the international community to understand that peacekeepers themselves should become the solution of human trafficking rather than a contributing cause, therefore an adequate response mechanism is needed to help these men in the most understanding yet appropriate way possible.

 

 

[1] For the purposes of this report the word “girls” refers to females under the age of 18 who are minors according to the International Labor Organization’s Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor

[2] Human Rights Watch. “Hopes Betrayed: Trafficking of Women and Girls to Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina for Forced Prostitution.” Rep. 9th ed. Vol. 14. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2002. Print. D.

[3] Allred, Keith J. “Peacekeepers and Prostitutes: How Deployed Forces Fuel the Demand for Trafficked Women and New Hope for Stopping It.” Armed Forces & Society, vol. 33, no. 1, 2006, pp. 5–23. JSTOR, Accessed 6 July 2021.

[4] Allred, Keith J. "Human Trafficking & Peacekeepers." Strategies Against Human Trafficking: The Role of the Security Sector. Geneva: National Defense Academy, 2009. 299-328. Print.

[5] United Nations Department of Peace Operations. “Contribution of Uniformed Personnel to UN” xperts on Mission, Formed Police Units, Individual Police, Staff Officer, and Troops as of : 31/10/2021 https://peacekeeping.un.org/sites/default/files/01_summary_of_contribution_43_oct_2021.pdf

[6] Allred, Keith J. "Human Trafficking & Peacekeepers." Strategies Against Human Trafficking: The Role of the Security Sector. Geneva: National Defense Academy, 2009. 299-328. Print.

[7] Alison Brysk, and Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick “From Human Trafficking to Human Rights : Reframing Contemporary Slavery.”, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central.

[8] Allred, Keith J. “Peacekeepers and Prostitutes: How Deployed Forces Fuel the Demand for Trafficked Women and New Hope for Stopping It.” Armed Forces & Society, vol. 33, no. 1, 2006, pp. 5–23. JSTOR, Accessed 6 July 2021.

[9] United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations. “Human Trafficking and United Nations Peacekeeping-DPKO Policy Paper.” Rep. United Nations, 2004. Print.

[10] Elizabeth F. Defeis, “U.N. Peacekeepers and Sexual Abuse and Exploitation: An End to Impunity.” 7 Wash. U. Global Stud. L. Rev. 185 (2008)

[11] Beber, Bernd, Michael J. Gilligan, Jenny Guardado, and Sabrina Karim. "Peacekeeping, Compliance with International Norms, and Transactional Sex in Monrovia, Liberia." International Organization, 2017, 1-30. Print.

[12] United Nations. “Glossary on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse- Thematic Glossary of Current Terminology Related to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) in the Context of the United Nations.” Rep. 2nd ed. United Nations, 2017. Print.

[13] Secretary-General’s Bulletin on Special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, ST/SGB/2003/13, 09/10/2003, Para 3.2.(d)

[14] United Nations. “Glossary on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse- Thematic Glossary of Current Terminology Related to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) in the Context of the United Nations.” Rep. 2nd ed. United Nations, 2017. Print.

[15] United Nations. "Sexual Exploitation and Abuse." Conduct in UN Field Missions. 09 Oct. 2017. Web. 04 July 2021.

[16] Office of internal Oversight Services, United Nations. 2015. “Evaluation of the Enforcement and Remedial Assistance Efforts for Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by the United Nations and Related Personnel in Peace- keeping Operations.” Technical report, OIOS.

 

[17] Bell, Sam R. et al. “U.N. Peacekeeping Forces and the Demand for Sex Trafficking.” International Studies Quarterly. 2018.