Free Republic

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Gunmen shot and killed a Canadian police officer with the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti on Tuesday, a U.N. official said. The officer was shot on National Route 1 not far from Cite Soleil, a large slum in the capital Port-au-Prince, said Marc Jaquet, a spokesman for the police contingent of the U.N. peacekeeping force. Canada identified the victim as Mark Bourque, and said he was one of 25 police officers who went to Haiti in October as part of the Canadian Special Elections Contingent. The peacekeepers, now numbering nearly 9,000 soldiers and police, were sent...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- The United Nations acknowledged Thursday that its peacekeepers likely opened fire on a car full of Haitian police officers this week, wounding two. According to a preliminary investigation, five uniformed officers were driving toward a U.N. checkpoint on Monday when the peacekeepers opened fire, said U.N. spokesman Damian Onses-Cardona. He showed reporters photographs of the blue car, which had official license plates but no other markings. "The first elements of the investigation tend to show that U.N. peacekeepers could have done the shooting," Onses-Cardona said. Peacekeepers may have confused the police with armed gang members whom they...

UN peacekeepers kicked out as war threatens Horn of Africa By David Blair, Africa Correspondent (Filed: 08/12/2005) Vital elements of a United Nations force on the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea were expelled yesterday, raising tension in the region. Eritrea's move to force out American and European members of the force greatly increased the prospect of a military confrontation along one of the world's most dangerous frontiers. The UN mission will be effectively crippled and the expulsion could foreshadow a new war in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea is on a permanent war footing and has massed about 200,000 troops...

ADDIS ABABA, 29 November (IRIN) - Four Ethiopian soldiers were killed and three wounded last week when their vehicle hit a newly laid landmine near the border with Eritrea, UN officials said on Tuesday. The anti-tank mine was planted around 15 km south of the demilitarized buffer zone created to separate the two countries' armies following their 1998-2000 border dispute that has continued to cause tension between the Horn of Africa neighbours. "Four Ethiopian soldiers died and three were injured when their military vehicle hit a newly laid landmine," said Phil Lewis, head of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre...

UNITED NATIONS The United Nations must do more to ensure its peacekeepers follow new rules against sex abuse, according to a new report by an independent refugee organization that found a "boys will be boys" culture still prevails in many military missions. The report released Tuesday by Refugees International – "Must Boys Be Boys? Ending Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in U.N. Peacekeeping Missions" – said a "hyper-masculine culture" has evolved among peacekeepers who bond together and erect a "wall of silence" to shield themselves from outside criticism. The U.N. instituted a policy of zero tolerance of sex abuse and zero...

UNITED NATIONS -- On July 6, about 1,400 heavily armed U.N. peacekeepers from Brazil, Peru and Jordan, backed by Argentine and Chilean helicopters, marched into a Haitian slum for an early-morning raid on the home of Emmanuel "Dread" Wilme, a gang leader who was agitating for the return to power of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Operation Iron Fist killed Wilme and at least six other gang members, according to a confidential U.N. account of the raid. But the bloody gun battle between the U.N. forces and Wilme's followers failed to dislodge the gang from its Port-au-Prince slum turf and...

UNITED NATIONS, July 29 -- Sudanese security forces and other armed groups continue to rape and abuse displaced women in Darfur with impunity, according to a U.N. report on sexual violence in the troubled Sudanese province. Louise Arbour, the United Nations' high commissioner for human rights, wrote that victims are routinely subjected to humiliating treatment at the hands of the authorities if they say they have been raped. Sudanese police frequently fail to register or investigate sex crimes, and courts sometimes try rape victims as adulteresses if they cannot prove they are telling the truth, she wrote. "Rape and gang...

Freepers, how many of you watched this PBS documentary Tuesday night? "The Brooklyn Connection" shows the terrifying ease with which a charming Brooklyn businessman (an Albanian Kosovar) raised $30 million during the Kosovo War, purchased weapons across the USA, and shipped them to Albania to be smuggled into Kosovo. These immigrants bragged about killing UN peacekeepers, Serbs, or anybody else who will get in their way. What I found most interesting, in addition to the Brooklyn Businessman's multiple ties to the Kosovar Liberation Army, was the glee with which John Kerry and Richard Holbrook personally accepted over $500,000.00 in campaign...

UN peacekeepers in Haiti have stormed a slum in the capital, Port-au-Prince, killing armed gang members loyal to the country's ousted president. At least two men were killed during several hours of gunfights between the 350 peacekeepers and armed men. A powerful gang leader and supporter of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was reported to be among the dead. The raid of the Cite Soleil shanty town, on the edge of the island, was the second slum offensive in two weeks. Struggle Haitian police chief Leon Charles said he was quite sure that gang leader Emmanuel Wilmey, known as "Dread Wilmey",...

UN tackles sex abuse by troops Changes include a new code of conduct for peacekeepers and monitors within each mission. NEW YORK – Since accusations of sexual abuse by peacekeepers in Congo arose a year ago, the United Nations has taken vigorous measures to address a problem that has dogged it for years. Consider: • Since Jan. 1, 2004, the UN has investigated 152 cases of alleged sexual violations - dismissing five UN staff and sending home 77 military personnel and national police from their missions, including six commanders. • The UN Security Council held its first-ever meeting on May...

DAKAR, 1 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - The UN Security Council has voted to close down the UN peacekeeping operation in Sierra Leone by the end of December, with the next contingent of troops due to pull out in mid-August. About 3,400 peacekeepers remain in the West African nation, three and a half years after the official end to a brutal civil war, which shocked the world with its images of drugged-up youths hacking the arms, legs, ears and lips off civilians. The UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) was created in October 1999 to help restore peace to Sierra Leone....

Nicholas Brady, clad in a black suit, his shiny black shoes glinting in the sun, clutched a folder at his side and released a rapid-fire cascade of arguments into the microphone. "The United Nations cannot solve genocide," he said forcefully. "The U.N. helped create it in Rwanda by supporting the leader of the Hutus." Around the Inner Harbor pavilion, tourists with disposable cameras and passers-by sipping lemonade seemed stunned as they gathered to hear the teenager plead his case for why the United States should resist joining U.N. peacekeeping missions. Brady was participating in a grueling competition late yesterday afternoon...

Four French peacekeepers are being investigated over accusations of sexual abuse against a girl in Ivory Coast. The French army said it received a complaint that the four abused the girl at Madinani village, in northern Ivory Coast, earlier this month. Neither the girl's age or identity, nor the soldiers' names, were disclosed. Some 4,000 French soldiers are serving alongside 6,000 UN troops in the former French colony, which has been divided by a two-and-a-half year rebellion. The French said there was as yet no evidence to confirm the allegations. Strained relations "We will treat this affair with the greatest...

GLOBAL: UN deals with sexual abuse allegations against peacekeepers11 May 2005 17:56:16 GMT Source: IRIN JOHANNESBURG, 11 May (IRIN) - The United Nations has requested funds for hiring additional staff to beef up preventative measures aimed at tackling allegations of sexual abuse perpetrated by some UN peacekeepers. In a report to the General Assembly this week, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted that the number of claims of sexual abuse and exploitation lodged against UN peacekeepers last year was more than double the number reported in 2003. In March the UN released a report by Annan's special adviser on the issue,...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Sex abuse allegations against U.N. peacekeepers and other staff more than doubled last year, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report released Thursday, calling the increase "deeply troubling." There were 121 allegations in 2004 compared with 53 allegations reported in 2003, Annan said in a report to the U.N. General Assembly. Annan said the rise in allegations could be partly due to new measures put in place by the U.N. to encourage alleged victims to come forward. He added that the figures collected for last year may not reflect the extent of the abuse because...

John Doe in Hell by F. H. Buckley Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire, Carroll & Graf, 562 pages, $30 The saddest story is of the impossibility of necessary things. It is necessary that the United Nations prevent genocide. It is also impossible for it to do so. The proof is Rwanda, where 800,000 people died in 100 days in the spring of 1994, in plain view of a small group of UN peacekeepers. And how did the UN answer the anguished pleas of the peacekeepers? It expressed concern, it expressed...

U.N. peacekeepers sexually abused and exploited local women and girls in Liberia (search), a U.N. spokesman said Friday. [...]A U.N. official speaking on condition of anonymity said the total number of allegations could eventually total 20. The official said four U.N. nations contributed to the Liberian mission but declined to name them. The head of the mission in Liberia, Jacques Paul Klein, is to step down when his contract expires at the end of the month, a U.N. spokesman announced Thursday. His deputy, Abou Moussa, will temporarily take over. The allegations in Liberia are just the latest to be leveled...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A U.N. peacekeeper from the Philippines was shot and killed Thursday on the fringes of a Haitian slum where troops have clashed with politically aligned street gangs, underscoring the volatile situation as the U.N. Security Council discussed expanding the mission. The soldier was killed as U.N. troops prepared to set up an observation post at the entrance to Cite Soleil, a slum dominated by supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, U.N. officials said. He was the third peacekeeper killed during the year-old U.N. mission in Haiti. Philippine troops said the victim, a staff sergeant and 22-year army...

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- Human rights activists charged Tuesday that U.N. peacekeepers knowingly gunned down civilians in a raid that targeted a marketplace, pinning down dozens of people down during the biggest gunbattle in the U.N.'s six-year mission in Congo. The human rights group Justice Plus listed names of several alleged civilian victims from a March 1 raid in eastern Congo and said they "paid with their life, while the mandate of the United Nations was to protect them." The United Nations said its troops fired only when they were attacked, and that women and children were among those who...

Anyone who was shocked by the most recent revelations of sexual misconduct by United Nations staff has never set foot in a U.N.-sponsored refugee camp. Sex crimes are only one especially disturbing symptom of a culture of abuse that exists in the United Nations precisely because the United Nations and its staff lack accountability. This lack of accountability is the central blemish on today's United Nations, and it lies behind most of the recent headlines. Whether taking advantage of a malnourished refugee or of a lucrative oil-for-food contract, the temptation is there, the act is easy and the risk of...