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Eritrea

Sex scandal threatens UN peace mission

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Within a span of six months, the UN peace mission in Eritrea and Ethiopia has been hit by damaging sex scandals in which the peacekeepers are accused of performing indecent sexual acts with minors. Their exploitative behaviour now threatens the future of the UN operation.

United Nations officials have indicated that they will co-operate with the Italian government as Rome seeks to punish an Italian peacekeeper formerly with the UN Mission for Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) who has been accused of performing indecent sexual acts with minors while working in Eritrea. This is the second time within the last six months that the mission has been rocked by a sex scandal. In this latest case, the serviceman - who cannot be named while the investigation is going on - is alleged to have had sex with underage Eritrean girls in the country's port city of Massawa.

The issue first became public last month, when an Italian peacekeeper - whose name was not revealed by investigators - who had served in Eritrea filed a complaint in early August in the office of the Italian military prosecutor in Padua, Italy. He accused his colleague of having slept with child prostitutes - some as young as 12 years old - during their term of duty in Eritrea, a former Italian colony. According to an August 31 UN briefing, the offences allegedly occurred between November of last year and June of this year.

It is not known what triggered the peacekeeper to file the charges, but Maurizio Block, head of the Italian military prosecutor's office in Padua, immediately dispatched an investigator to Massawa and the Eritrean capital, Asmara, to probe the issue. Block based his action on a 1998 Italian law, which prosecutes Italian nationals who commit sexual offences abroad. The law makes it possible to try the alleged offender in Italy.

Subsequent investigations in August by Italian investigators indicated that it was true that the UN peacekeeper had slept with under-age Eritrean prostitutes working in the country's bars, hotels, or on the street. Block said that the allegations have been "confirmed by statements from other Italian soldiers and by documents gathered there (Eritrea)." If such evidence is conclusive, it will soil a peace force that was dispatched last year to monitor the Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) between Ethiopia and Eritrea, countries that for two years fought one the bloodiest wars in recent years.

UNMEE officials have pledged to co-operate with Italian authorities after Rome indicated that it wouldn't rest until it gets to the bottom of the sex saga. Reuters reported in mid-August that an Italian government military investigator from Padua was sent to Eritrea to collect and examine evidence. The investigator has also been reported to have taken statements from some of the concerned peacekeepers, hoping to build a solid case.

Much of this investigation has been going on without the involvement of UNMEE officials, who claim that they only learnt about it from Italian media, according to the Reuters report. The UN officials have also stated that the Italian government hasn't sent them formal notifications about the case or the ongoing investigations.

UNMEE has said in its August 31 statement that it takes the sexual abuse allegations very seriously, and declared that it would conduct an investigation. "The Mission has zero tolerance towards such acts, and will do its utmost to quickly and thoroughly establish the facts," said the statement, issued by UNMEE's information office. The UN officials "hope that official information will be made available by the Italian government."

This latest scandal follows on the heels of a similar one, which came to light in March of this year. Three Danish peacekeepers - whose names were withheld due to the ongoing investigation - were accused of sexually molesting a 13-year-old Eritrean girl between February 16 and 18 of this year also in Massawa, where they were on holiday. When the issue surfaced, UNMEE officials set up a board of inquiry, saying that the allegations were a "serious concern to all UNMEE staff and peace keepers." Subsequent investigations saw the peacekeepers sent back home where they were tried for indecent behaviour. They received light fines.

When they were send for their mission, the peacekeepers were required "to use their skills and resources to help restore normal civilian life in the still tense area," according to a August 2000 UN report on peacekeeping. It was the first UN peace assignment that has at its disposal money to help communities recover from the effects of war. For instance, by July of this year, UNMEE had approved more than thirty projects in both Eritrea and Ethiopia worth US $341,000. These involved the rehabilitation of water systems, school latrines, school desks, and the provision of non-medical equipment for health centres and sports equipment for schools.

In July, merely one month before the scandal erupted, UNMEE troops and the Eritrean Defence Force (EDF) had embarked on a joint HIV/AIDS training course for UNMEE military and civilian staff, as well as for the EDF. Ian Martin, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, had officially opened the weeklong programme, the graduates from which will become disseminate information, and train local people, on HIV/AIDS in Asmara. It was the second phase of the training programme implemented from July 16 to 21, targeting a core group of 25 EDF soldiers. Another group of 25 soldiers is participating in the second part of the course, half of whom are EDF personnel. The remainder of the group is made up of UNMEE staff based in Eritrea. The training is later to be extended to UNMEE Ethiopia with the objectives also being to strengthen the capacity of each UNMEE contingent and especially in cultivating behaviour-change interventions for the mission's military and civilian personnel.

There was to be a secondary goal of increasing access to, and use of, male and female condoms, and build the capacity of UNMEE to provide HIV/AIDS counselling and testing. But such noble objectives could be torpedoed by the behaviour of some of the peacekeepers, especially now that the Eritrean government has become vocal on their sexual lifestyles. In recent weeks, government officials have been calling for justice in relation to the Italian case, arguing that the offender has to be punished either through a national and international judicial system.

Asmara has been firm that the matter is a serious one and whose effects shouldn't be underestimated. On August 30, Andeberhan Woldegiorgis, the country's Commissioner for Co-ordination with the UNMEE, wrote to the UN special envoy concerned with the mission, Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, saying that Eritrea was very anxious to probe the issue that he claimed was of "great concern to the Eritrean government." The letter also lamented that an earlier request by Eritrea that UNMEE officials undertake HIV/AIDS tests on all UN peacekeeping soldiers had not been implemented.

Legwaila has promised action once the information pertaining to the Italian peacekeeper has been gathered and assessed. He has vowed that UNMEE will "determine the scope and depth of appropriate measures to be taken," adding that the peace mission has been keen to respect the laws, culture, traditions, customs, and practices of the two host countries. He further emphasised that all UN peacekeepers were bound by their code of conduct. "They should not indulge in immoral acts of sexual, physical or psychological abuse or exploitation of the local population, especially women and children," Legwaila said in the briefing. But it seems that some of the peacekeepers are not seeing matters that way.

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