UN moves quickly on sexual abuse scandals

The United Nations is poised to crack down on sexual abuse committed by its peacekeepers after conceding that the problem may not be isolated to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a rash of cases involving blue-helmeted soldiers has been reported.

An internal UN report to be released in the next few days is expected to recommend for the first time that any peacekeepers accused of sexual molestation not be allowed to return home until they have been prosecuted in the country where the behaviour is alleged to have taken place.

But their own militaries would be responsible for conducting the courts-martial.

The report will aim to put an end to the current arrangements whereby accused soldiers are allowed to return to their home countries before being prosecuted. In many instances, those prosecutions never take place.

The UN is also moving to begin publicly identifying countries whose soldiers are facing sex charges.

Allegations of abuse in the Congo emerged last May, and the UN acted quickly in the light of other scandals, notably the alleged corruption in the management of the oil-for-food programme in Iraq.

The UN's envoy to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, William Lacy Swing, an American, is expected to offer his resignation today when he arrives in New York to confer with the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. Although Swing has not been accused of any direct involvement in the scandal, senior UN officials have concluded that it would be better to have a change at the top in the country.

The UN is bracing for other cases to surface from peacekeeping missions in other countries, including Burundi, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Haiti.

Hearings into the Congo scandal began this week in the United States Congress. A Republican representative from New Jersey, Christopher Smith, is introducing a bill to that would threaten to withhold American funds from UN peacekeeping missions unless all countries contributing soldiers to those missions have procedures in place to instantly prosecute soldiers accused of sexual misconduct.

Because the US accounts for about a quarter of the UN's peacekeeping budget, the bill could have a powerful impact.

Claims against peacekeepers

Officials have been investigating about 150 allegations lodged against 50 United Nations soldiers serving in the Congo. They are accused of offering tiny monetary rewards to prostitutes and minors as young as 13 for sex.

There have also been allegations of rape and gang rape of the very people they are meant to be protecting.

There are 11,000 peacekeepers in the country trying to curb civil conflict there.

- INDEPENDENT