The UN Has Skeletons in Their Closet
The UN had to write a UN report about themselves.
Sexual Abuse Violations
From 2005 to 2017, over 2000 sexual abuse and exploitation allegations were made against UN peacekeepers in conflict zones around the world. More than 300 of the allegations involved children.
Some of the survivors were only 10 years old when they were raped or sexually exploited by the very UN peacekeepers who were supposed to protect them.
Only a fraction of the accused served jail time – the UN has a track record for that.
An internal UN report revealed that at least 134 UN peacekeepers ran a sex ring from 2004 to 2007 in Haiti. 114 of the peacekeepers were sent home, but none were ever imprisoned.
Cholera Epidemic in Haiti
In early 2010, Haiti had been free of lab-confirmed cases of cholera for over 15 months.
Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake that year. Nepalese UN peacekeepers were deployed to help the Haitians, but the UN failed to screen the Nepalese force for cholera.
And so, the sick UN peacekeepers introduced cholera to Haiti – which would go on to infect over 800,000 people and kill 10,000.
For six whole years, the UN denied any involvement in the transmission of cholera.
When they finally did so in 2016, they did not accept any legal responsibility and did not agree to pay compensation (for an epidemic they literally started). A UN spokesperson instead said that the outbreak was a result of “a confluence of circumstances” and essentially blamed the epidemic on Haiti’s vulnerability due to the earthquake.
Outgoing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon did apologise to Haiti for the organisation’s role in the epidemic and announced a USD$400 million fund to help the affected Haitians. They sought to raise the funds over two years. By the end of 2019, the UN had only raised USD$20.5 million, and spent only USD$3.2 million. Haiti celebrated the end of the epidemic only last year, and now they’re battling Covid-19.
Watched a Genocide Happen
The UN was established in 1945. There have been many genocides since and the UN was a witness to all of them. In several cases, the UN intervened while in several others, they did not, and they watched silently as the horrors unfolded. One particular genocide saw a mixture of the two – the Rwandan genocide.
The Rwandan genocide, like all other genocides, is a topic that requires extensive research. I am not qualified to dive into the specificities of it so I’ll make an attempt at a brief overview. Extremists amongst the majority Hutu population massacred the minority Tutsi population and anyone opposed to the genocide. Over 800,000 civilians died – primarily the Tutsis – and 2 million people fled Rwanda. The genocide started on 6th April 1994 and lasted approximtaely 100 days.
The UN had set up the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) to mediate a cease-fire but their attempts were largely unsuccessful. On 11th January 1994, the head of the UN contingent in Rwanda, Major-General Romeo Dallaire, sent a cable to the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) in New York. It detailed how he had been told by an informant that 1000 Tutsis could be killed within 20 minutes. He also detailed how the extremist Hutus intended to drive the UN out by killing Belgian peacekeepers. Kofi Annan, the then Under Secretary-General of DPKO told Dallaire to take the information to the interim government (which had been formed by Hutu extremists).
On 6th April 1994, the first day of the genocide, 10 Belgian soldiers were killed. Belgium promptly asked for their troops to be withdrawn. Meanwhile, the UN ignored warnings of the escalating genocide and began to pull out peacekeepers. Lieutenant Luc Lemaire, who was in command of a contingent of Belgian troops guarding 2000 Tutsis at a school, said that the UN redeployed his men to help evacuate white foreigners. He said ‘we have received a series of clear messages that showed me the UN’s mission was to be the evacuation of expatriates to the airport’.
And so the peacekeepers were told to abandon the Tutsis seeking refuge under the UN. As the soldiers left, Tutsis clung onto their vehicles, pleading to be shot by them rather than massacred by the Hutus.
As the peacekeepers were leaving, they witnessed the Hutus entering the compound armed with guns. But they left anyway. Within two hours of their departure, most of the 2000 Tutsis had been murdered by gun, grenade and blade.
Many have claimed this to be a racial issue, given that the UN also left their Rwandan staff behind. Chris McGreal, a witness to the genocide, said “When the massacres started, the UN saved the white people”.
Bibliography
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/04/1062962
https://harvardpolitics.com/world/united-nations-haiti/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/united-nations-un-haiti-cholera-letter-rights-monitors
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/01/11/un-peacekeeping-has-sexual-abuse-problem
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/04/1062962
https://allthatsinteresting.com/rwandan-genocide
https://www.britannica.com/event/Rwanda-genocide-of-1994
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/816325-19940111a2-unam-rwdp.html#document/p2/a138339
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/17/un-united-nations-peacekeepers-rwanda-bosnia