The Invincible Family by Kimberly Ells

Author:Kimberly Ells
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gateway Editions
Published: 2020-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

Diplomatic Immunity

Sadly, the UN system may be a logical place for people interested in sexually victimizing children to place themselves. If a sexual predator wants easy access to helpless victims, an appealing option is to become an official child advocate and put on a blue UN uniform that makes starving, homeless children trust you. A bonus of joining the UN team is not just easy access to victims, but the high probability of escaping punishment due to endless, bureaucratic red tape. The UN can excuse itself from responsibility for the actions of the troops it uses to carry out its peacekeeping missions on the grounds that they are not technically UN employees; they are only soldiers assigned from various countries to fill missions under the umbrella of UN operations. Troops are accountable to the military discipline systems of their own countries for crimes they may commit. To what degree this occurs depends on many factors, including internal corruption.

While peacekeeping troops cannot technically claim immunity for their actions under the auspices of the UN, official UN personnel can. A founding UN document called the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations says UN officials shall “be immune from legal process in respect of words spoken or written and all acts performed by them in their official capacity.”48 Diplomatic immunity is a necessary part of carrying out some political initiatives. However, Gallo believes the immunity loophole is “being grossly abused” in the UN system, allowing offenders at many levels to escape accountability for their actions.49

With accusations of child exploitation running rampant and the reputation of the United Nations increasingly in peril, in 2017 UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres admitted, “[S]exual exploitation and abuse is not a problem of peacekeeping, it is a problem of the entire United Nations.”50 To his credit, he then spoke strongly against sexual exploitation and outlined a strategy for combatting it. Unfortunately, critics point out that for at least twenty years the leadership of the UN has known child rape and other sexual offences were being committed by UN personnel and UN partners and have failed to act effectively against it.

Although elements of it sound promising, the strategy going forward offers little in the way of concrete policy changes such as screenings to weed out child predators before they join the UN system or robust protection for whistleblowers. There has been no commitment to permanently waive immunity for child sex crimes or to grant outside entities the power to criminally charge UN staff, peacekeepers, and international NGO staff for crimes involving children. Because these ongoing deficiencies continue to enable abuse of children across the globe, one former UN official says, “The failure to put in place the best possible training, prevention, detection and prosecution mechanisms” is an “inexcusable command failure at the most senior level in the UN.”51

Commenting on the history of sexual abuse in United Nations peacekeeping efforts, representatives from Code Blue Campaign state,

Member States have not yet come to the realization that the day of reckoning is approaching.

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