Oxfam Staffers Accused of Abusing Haitian Women and Children.
| Autor | Rodriguez, George |
Their job in Haiti was to protect and assist the country's population, which had been battered by poverty, destructive natural events, and violence, but the UN peacekeepers and the members of Oxfam, an international relief organization, strayed from their missions' aims, and local women and children were harmed.
The peacekeepers, known as "blue helmets," were part of the Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haiti (UN Mission for Stabilization in Haiti, MINUSTAH), created "to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence, within its capabilities and areas of deployment."
According to its job description, MINUSTAH also had to support the government, human rights bodies, and specialized NGOs "in their efforts to promote and protect human rights, particularly of women and children, in order to ensure individual accountability for human rights abuses and redress for victims."
In real life, many protectors actually turned out to be perpetrators of the very abuses they were supposed to prevent.
Women and children were highlighted by the UN as a sector the mission had to watch out for in terms of security and crime-related violence. But the blue helmets did not stick to the script, and many of their actions were counter to their mandate and to elementary ethics.
The cholera epidemic
In October of 2010, just nine months after an earthquake devastated parts of Haiti, cholera-infected Pakistani blue helmets polluted the country's largest river, the Artibonite, by throwing contaminated sewage from their base into the water, triggering an ongoing epidemic that has sickened around one million people and claimed about 10,000 lives (NotiCen, March 28, 2013, and Oct. 3, 2013).
Mission troopers have also been held responsible for the killing of unarmed civilians in anti-crime operations. And reports and personal accounts place in the hundreds the cases of sexual abuse of women and minors by MINUSTAH personnel, including a child sex ring run by more than 100 of the mission's military from countries as varied as Sri Lanka and Uruguay (NotiCen, May 11, 2017, and Nov. 9, 2017).
New accusations
And in recent weeks another variety of abuse centered on Haitian women and minors has just surfaced, this time from members of the British charity organization Oxfam.
In this case, the whistleblower was the London daily The Times, which after a series of reports on worldwide sexual misconduct by members of international charities, on Feb. 9...
Para continuar leyendo
Solicita tu pruebaCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
