Congo Sex Scandal Prompts Efforts for Reform in U.N.

"They offered me love," she said, in the colloquial French spoken in this former Belgian colony. And they offered her money -- just $5, but more than she would make in a month at the market. "It was done in the car, in the dark," she said. "I didn't have the strength to refuse."

Those words became a refrain in her story, one of many that now dog the U.N. mission here. The next time Aziza met with the peacekeepers, two of them insisted on having sex with her simultaneously. They beat her when she refused to do the things they showed her on pornographic videos. Her mother found out what had happened when Aziza had to go to the hospital with an infection and threw her out. Desperate, she went back to the foreigners several more times.

"I don't know whether they are normal or not," said Aziza, who did not want to use her full name out of shame. "I wonder whether all white people are like that."

Certainly some, even many, U.N. peacekeepers and civilian officers in this war-plagued region were. Aziza's story and at least 150 other reports of sexual abuse in Congo have come to light in recent months, shocking an institution that considers itself an agency of mercy.

The shock has inspired action on an overhaul of the U.N.'s 16 peacekeeping missions around the world. In Congo, home to the largest operation -- with about 11,000 soldiers and 1,200 civilians -- the allegations point to nearly all of the major peacekeeping contingents. But they also involve senior civilian officials, including a top security officer, a chief on the U.N. special envoy's staff and an internal oversight investigator.

The charges range from rape to exploitation -- sex for a bottle of water or a military ration -- to "relationships" or solicitations that are marked by a severe imbalance in power. One case, involving a French U.N. staffer who took digital pictures of underage girls, has caused concern that it could become "the U.N.'s Abu Ghraib" if the photos get out.

Charges of sexual abuse have haunted U.N. peacekeepers for years, most notably during operations in Cambodia, the Balkans and Liberia in the 1990s. The cases in Congo, however, may mark a tipping point.