United Nations Peacekeeping Forces

An initial investigation into widespread sexual exploitation and abuse of Congolese women and girls by U.N. peacekeepers and officials has resulted in punishment for only a few U.N. personnel, according to an internal U.N. report released Friday. Many of the allegations are difficult to prove and the U.N. is powerless to discipline perpetrators, so the abuse continues despite sensitivity training for troops and multiple investigations, the report says.

One evening four months ago, a soft-spoken 18-year-old named Aziza was selling bananas in the market here when some U.N. peacekeepers summoned her to their car. Aziza went over thinking they wanted to buy fruit, but was persuaded to engage in a different kind of transaction. "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.

The Philippines will send up to 150 soldiers to Haiti next week to help United Nations peacekeeping forces stem political unrest and a wave of killings, an army spokesman said. Lt. Col. Buenaventura Pascual, a spokesman for the military, said the Philippine troops would join nearly 4,000 peacekeepers in Haiti. The country has been racked by violence since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in February. Nearly 200 people in Haiti have been killed in the last two months.

Two U.N. peacekeepers were wounded in separate shootouts over the weekend, one with supporters of Haiti's ousted president and the other with survivors of Tropical Storm Jeanne, officials said Sunday. They were the first casualties of the 4-month-old U.N. mission in the Caribbean country. In flood-ravaged Gonaives, an Argentine soldier was shot in the arm Saturday night after a memorial Mass for the estimated 3,000 dead in the wake of Jeanne.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a year's extension for the U.N. mission in Iraq on Thursday, an operation that has yet to get off the ground because of growing insecurity. The resolution affirms the U.N.'s "leading role" in assisting the Iraqi people and government in the nation's rebuilding and formation of an elected government.

United Nations peacekeepers took control of the strategic city of Bukavu as renegade soldiers withdrew and Congolese President Joseph Kabila attempted to calm his nation after the largest and most violent protests since he took office. Renegade Gen. Laurent Nkunda said most of his forces had completed their pullout and U.N. peacekeepers were now controlling the city, a trading center on the border with Rwanda. On Thursday, U.N. troops shot and killed at least two protesters who stormed a U.N.

The U.N. Security Council on Friday unanimously approved deployment of more than 6,000 U.N. peacekeepers to Ivory Coast and demanded that the government and rebels meet all requirements of a peace deal so presidential elections could be held in 2005. The United States will not contribute any troops, but congressional approval is required because Washington pays 27% of U.N. peacekeeping costs. Last month, France circulated a draft resolution calling for a 6,240-member U.N.

Thrusting AK-47s in the air one last time, Liberian fighters began surrendering weapons to United Nations peacekeepers, a major step toward ending 14 years of war. The U.N.-supervised campaign to disarm 40,000 rebel and government fighters nationwide began in the capital, Monrovia. The disarmament comes after an August peace deal and the exile of President Charles Taylor.

The first U.N. peace missions to Liberia's rebel-held east have found villages deserted except for looting insurgents, and terrorized civilians in the grip of rebels or lying dead in the bush. An Associated Press reporter accompanying Gen. Daniel Opande, the Kenyan commander of Liberia's 3-month-old U.N. peace force, saw hamlet after hamlet bloodied by pillaging fighters or persistent clashes between rebels and government hard-liners.

The Security Council voted unanimously Monday to expand the 5,500-strong NATO-led force in Afghanistan to areas beyond the capital. The vote, which had been expected, comes after Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the world body last month to deploy peacekeepers into lawless regions. The Afghan government, which took over after a U.S.