Sex, Statistics, Peacekeepers and Power: UN Data on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and the Quest for Legal Reform
| Date | 01 November 2016 |
| Published date | 01 November 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12225 |
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THE
MODERN LAW REVIEW
Volume 79 November 2016 No. 6
Sex, Statistics, Peacekeepers and Power: UN Data
on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and the Quest
for Legal Reform
Kate Grady∗
The UN Secretariat provides annual statistics on allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse
made against peacekeeping personnel, with reduced numbers of allegations leading to claims of
success for the UN’s‘zero tolerance’ policy. This article explores the use of data as ‘technologies’
of global governance, to examine the function that these annual statistics serve for the UN and
the impact that they have on calls for legal reform. Thus far, the statistics have attracted little
academic appraisal. Yet, they have been used to establish the UN’s authority to resolve the
‘problem’ of sexual exploitation and abuse, diminishing the space for critique of UN policy and
undermining the quest for improved legal arrangements.
INTRODUCTION
‘Child refugee sex scandal’ was the headline on the BBC News on 26 February
2002.1The BBC’s coverage was sparked by the leaking of a report which
implicated UN peacekeepers in sexual exploitation and abuse of refugees in
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.2The UN was initially dismissive of the
report: an investigation by its own Office of Internal Oversight Services found
that the allegations against peacekeepers were unsubstantiated.3It was, the
Office said, ‘misleading and untrue’ to say that sexual exploitation and abuse
were widespread since many of the allegations against peacekeepers were based
on rumour, speculation or myth.4
∗SOAS, University of London. This ar ticle draws on a paper presented to the Academic Council
on the UN System annual meeting in The Hague in 2015. I am very grateful to the participants
there for their helpful comments, to the anonymous reviewers at the Modern Law Review for their
suggestions and to Professor Matthew Craven,Professor Robert McCorquodale, Dr Gina Heathcote,
Dr Paul O’Connell, Dr Isobel Roele and Dr Matt Fisher for their advice and feedback.
1 ‘Child refugee sex scandal’ BBC News 26 February 2002 at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/
africa/1842512.stm (all URLs referred to were last accessed 28 June 2016).
2 UNHCR and Save the Children UK, Sexual Violence and Exploitation: The Experience of Refugee
Children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone (February 2002).
3 ‘UN rejects refugee sex abuse allegations’ BBC News 23 October 2002 at news.bbc.co.
uk/1/hi/world/africa/2351805.stm; UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, Report by the
Office of Internal Oversight Services on the investigation into sexual exploitation of refugees by aid workers
in West Africa UN Doc A/57/465 11 October 2002, para 17.
4ibid, para 42; para 15(a)-(f).
C2016 The Author.The Moder n Law Review C2016 The Modern Law Review Limited. (2016) 79(6) MLR 931–960
Published by John Wiley& Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
Sex, Statistics, Peacekeepers and Power
On 15 April 2003, the UN General Assembly considered the Office of In-
ternal Oversight Services’ investigation. In so doing, it requested the Secretary-
General ‘to maintain data on investigations into sexual exploitation and related
offences, irrespective of age and gender, by humanitarian and peacekeeping
personnel.’5Sexual exploitation in this context has been defined by the UN to
mean ‘any actual or attempted abuse of a position of vulnerability, differential
power, or trust, for sexual pur poses, including, but not limited to, profiting
monetarily, socially or politically from the sexual exploitation of another.’ Sex-
ual abuse ‘means the actual or threatened physical intrusion of a sexual nature,
whether by force or under unequal or coercive conditions.’6
By the time of the General Assembly resolution, the prevailingpolitical winds
at the UN had changed: on 17 March 2003 the United States had initiated war
with Iraq7following months of anxious debate at the UN. The world body,
the US administration argued, had become a defunct, irrelevant institution. A
comment piece appeared in The Guardian newspaper entitled ‘Thank God for
the death of the UN.’8The issue of sexual exploitation and abuse, once a drop
in the UN ocean, now appeared on the horizon as a looming scandal. By 2004,
it had escalated into a full-blown crisis. With the UN also battling allegations
of corruption in the Oil for Food programme,9more reports alleged that
peacekeepers in the mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo ‘were
involved in the sexual abuse and exploitation of local Congolese girls.’10 ‘DR
Congo’s shameful sex secret’ cr ied the BBC,11 followed in short succession by,
‘[Kofi] Annan admits UN DR Congo abuses’12 and, to finish the year, ‘New
sex misconduct claims hit UN’,13 this time in the peacekeeping operation in
Burundi. In early 2005, the Office of Internal Oversight Services accepted that
there was a ‘pattern’ of behaviour in the mission in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo which included regular sexual contact between peacekeepers and
local women and girls, often in exchange for food or small amounts of cash.14
These allegations, some have said, were the ‘turning point’ for the UN.15
5 UN General Assembly Res 57/306 (2003), para 10. This was the first time that such data had
been collected centrally: E. Rehn and E. Johnson Sirleaf, Women, War and Peace: The Independent
Experts’ Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women’s Role in Peace-building
(New York: UNIFEM, 2002) 72.
6 UN Secretary-General, Secretary-General’s Bulletin ST/SGB/2003/13 9 October 2003, s 1.
7 S. Meisler, Kofi Annan: A Man of Peace in a World of War (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons, 2007)
251.
8ibid, 255.
9ibid,ch15.
10 UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, Investigation by the Office of Internal Oversight Services
into allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse in the United Nations Organization Mission in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo UN Doc A/59/661 5 January 2005, para 1.
11 ‘DR Congo’s shameful sex secret’ BBC News 3 June 2004 at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/
africa/3769469.stm.
12 ‘Annan admits UN DR Congo abuses’ BBC News 9 November 2004 at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
world/africa/4027319.stm.
13 ‘New sex misconduct claims hit UN’ BBC News 17 December 2004 at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
world/africa/4106515.stm.
14 UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, n 10 above, 1-2.
15 A. Shotton, ‘A Strategy to Address Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by United Nations Peace-
keeping Personnel’ (2006) 39 Cornell ILJ 97, 97.
932 C2016 The Author. The Modern Law Review C2016 The Modern Law Review Limited.
(2016) 79(6) MLR 931–960
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