Book alleges UN human trafficking

Actress Rachel Weisz, who plays Kathryn Bolkovac. Photo / Supplied

The true story of how United Nations contractors took part in human trafficking and enforced prostitution is told for the first time in a book by a former UN human rights investigator who blew the whistle.

In The Whistleblower, published last week, Kathryn Bolkovac describes how she thought she was taking a well-paid job with DynCorp International, a private military contractor employed by the United States State Department to recruit police officers to serve as UN peacekeepers in Bosnia.

Instead the former police officer from Nebraska sacrificed her career and fled from Bosnia in fear of her life.

Her story has been made into a film, The Whistleblower, starring Rachel Weisz. The actress describes Bolkovac as "a remarkable woman who has had the courage to tell the truth and stand up for the victims of sex trafficking, putting her own life on the line".

Bolkovac recalls how DynCorp staff were suspected of buying weapons and trafficking girls as young as 12 from the Serbian mafia.

Demoted and then fired, she was warned by a colleague that her life was in danger. She fled the country and, in June 2001, successfully sued DynCorp for unfair dismissal.

"It would be easy to attribute the misbehaviour to isolated incidents by a couple of bad apples," she writes.

"But the disappearance of files from human trafficking cases that implicated DynCorp personnel, the abrupt and unexplained cancellation of legitimate human rights investigations, men from around the globe getting away with buying and raping teenage girls - these are not isolated incidents and cannot be dismissed as the actions of rogue individuals."

Bolkovac cites allegations of sexual assault and human rights violations, many involving DynCorp, by UN peacekeepers in more than a dozen countries.

She claims the use of private contractors has created a band of mercenaries - a secretive, unregulated, well-paid, under-the-radar force that is larger than the US Army - and the framework for recruiting and managing this band is dangerously flawed.

DynCor is one of the biggest contractors working for the US Government. A spokeswoman insisted that Dyncorp "takes the issue of human trafficking extremely seriously".

She added: "Authors produce the most compelling storylines possible, and that process requires a mix of fiction and fact - Ms Bolkovac's limited first-hand knowledge of our predecessor company ended a decade ago. She has no basis for making comments about DynCorp International as it exists today; any current generalisations that are drawn from the book are unfounded."

- INDEPENDENT