PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI — Girls as young as 13 were having sex with U.N. peacekeepers for as little as $1.
Five young Haitian women who followed soldiers back to Sri Lanka were forced into brothels or polygamous households. They have been rescued and brought home to warn others of the dangers of foreign liaisons.
The young mother of a peacekeeper's child had to send the toddler to live with relatives in the countryside after other children and parents taunted him with the nickname "Little Minustah," the French acronym for the United Nations mission here.
In the latest sex scandal to tarnish the world organization, at least 114 Sri Lankan troops have been expelled from the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti on suspicion of sexual exploitation of Haitian women and girls.
This poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere has endured occupation repeatedly over the centuries, each time suffering instances of statutory rape and economically coerced sexual relations.
But this time, the troops had been sent to protect the country's people. The United Nations had taken measures to stop such abuse after revelations three years ago that its troops in Congo were having sex with girls in exchange for staples such as eggs and milk or token sums of money.
When the abuses in the Haitian capital's impoverished Martissant neighborhood were brought to the mission's attention in August, a unit of the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services was deployed to investigate. Its report to the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York remains confidential, but mission commanders repatriated 111 soldiers and three officers on disciplinary grounds in early November.
MINUSTAH spokesman David Wimhurst said all violators of U.N. ethical policies are swiftly punished.
"The rules are very strict and very clear. There's a zero-tolerance policy," he said of the code of conduct to which all of the nearly 9,000 U.N. soldiers, police and civilians deployed in Haiti must adhere.
"You can't have sex with anybody under 18 or with anybody in exchange for money, services, promises or food."
The internal U.N. action has inspired Haiti's fledgling feminist organizations to demand reparations from Sri Lanka and an investigation by Haitian authorities of suspected abuses among the 30-plus national contingents that make up MINUSTAH.
