Free Republic

IsraelNN.com) The United Nations Security Council is to vote on a resolution condemning Israel for its retaliation in the Gaza region following heavy Kassam rocket attacks. A close vote is expected. The United States wants to postpone the vote until after the weekend, but Qatar wants a vote Thursday night. The United States is lobbying the council's 15 member nations to vote against the motion, while Qatar is pressing for its passage. A two-thirds majority is required to pass the resolution. France said it will vote for it.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Sexual abuse of girls by U.N. peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was widespread and ongoing despite many revelations and probes, the U.N. watchdog agency reported on Friday.   The peacekeepers over the last year have been accused of gang rapes, sexual harassment and bribing children as young as 12 or 13 with eggs, milk and a few dollars to have sex in bushes, on the bare ground or under mango trees. The new report by the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) concentrates on Bunia, in the eastern part of the Congo,...

UN peacekeepers in Congo sexually abused and exploited women and girls, some as young as 13, according to a report released by a UN watchdog today. Sexual contact between peacekeepers and Congolese women and girls occurred regularly, usually in exchange for food or small sums of money, an investigation by the Office of Internal Oversight Services found. The problems were “serious and ongoing” and it was ”disturbing” that there was no deterrence or protection programme, the report said by the UN oversight agency said. Sexual activities continued even while the investigation was going on, the OIOS found, noting that freshly...

UNITED NATIONS — U.N. peacekeepers in Congo sexually abused and exploited women and girls, some as young as 13, according to a report released by a U.N. watchdog agency Friday. Peacekeepers regularly had sex with Congolese women and girls, usually in exchange for food or small sums of money, an investigation by the Office of Internal Oversight Services found. "We have had and continue to have a serious problem of sexual exploitation and abuse," said William Lacy Swing, the secretary-general's special representative to Congo, said Friday at a news conference. "We are shocked by it, we are outraged, we are...

A SENIOR United Nations official is demanding that her colleagues involved in the sex trade in Bosnia should be stripped of their immunity and prosecuted. Madeleine Rees, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Bosnia, has broken ranks to demand that UN officials, international peacekeepers and police who are involved in sex crimes be brought to justice in their home countries. Speaking exclusively to Scotland on Sunday, the British lawyer has also launched an outspoken attack on her former boss. She accuses Jacques Paul Klein, the former head of the UN Mission in Bosnia, of not taking UN complicity...

Two years after the charges first surfaced, Kofi Annan has finally admitted that U.N. peacekeeping troops sexually abused war refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. "I am really shocked by these accusations," the United Nations Secretary-General told reporters last week. He shouldn't be. Allegations of sex crimes committed by U.N. staff and troops date back at least a decade and span operations on three continents, in places like Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cambodia. But rather than showing the kind of "zero tolerance" toward sexual crimes that Mr. Annan now promises, the U.N. has treated such instances with cavalier...

LAST MONTH A CLASSIFIED UNITED Nations report prompted Secretary General Kofi Annan to admit that U.N. peacekeepers and staff have sexually abused or exploited war refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The worst of the 150 or so allegations of misconduct--some of them captured on videotape--include pedophilia, rape, and prostitution. While a U.N. investigation into the scandal continues, the organization has just suspended two more peacekeepers in neighboring Burundi over similar charges. The revelations come three years after another U.N. report found "widespread" evidence of sexual abuse of West African refugees."The issue with the U.N. is that peacekeeping operations...