This story should shock you to your core, but it has happened. Those who are supposed to guide and direct the weak and poor to safety are instead worsening matters.
A United Nations (UN) aid worker in the Central African Republic (CAR) has revealed that French forces in the country, helping to restore law and order, have been engaging in sexual abuse against children displaced by violence, seeking refuge in UN temporal camps.
In December of 2013, French troops were deployed alongside a UN-mandated European Union and an African Union peacekeeping mission to the country, after it had descended into sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians.
Ever since the French mission was deployed, observers have questioned their ability to stop the violence and some of their activities which are held in secrecy by the French Defense Ministry.
A UN aid worker from Sweden, Anders Kompass, has confirmed these concerns expressed earlier. He has disclosed that hungry and homeless young boys in UN refugee camps were forced by French soldiers to perform sex acts on them in return for food or money. Since Kompass made this revelation, the UN has suspended him and placed him under internal investigation. Kompass made the revelation to The Guardian newspaper, in the UK.
According to human rights activists, what the aid worker disclosed to the press is a drafted report of the incident the UN had investigated, but for reasons known only to UN officials in the country, decided to hide it from the public.
Alexis Nguitté, who works at a child welfare centre in the M’Poko refugee camp at the outskirts of the capital, Bangui, told France24.com that he first heard the rumors of French troops allegedly raping hungry children in exchange for food, at the start of 2014. He then started to do his own independent investigations before alerting the UN officials in charge of the camps. The M’Poko camp is made up of children who fled conflict and sought shelter for safety. It was home to more than 100,000 refugees during the peak period of the violence in the CAR. Many of the children are orphans, forced to fend for themselves and lacking both food and water.
“I talked to the victims who wanted to tell their story. But after I alerted the UN mission, its human rights and justice department, and UNICEF, we had to conduct the interviews again. We took it case by case, respecting UN standards. They got a list out for each child and asked me their age and what they had told me,” Nguitté said. He also admitted that this was done last year but the UN refused to make the report public after all the thorough investigation.
Paula Donovan, co-director of the NGO-AIDS Free World, also told CNN in an interview that detailed testimonies from six children interviewed last year by staff from the UN children’s agency, UNICEF and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, were very horrible.
“There are a few cases where a boy describes the sodomizing of a friend by soldiers who are threatening to beat him if he tells anyone about what they are doing,” Donovan said.
For independent observers, the scandal has raised questions about why the French troops were deployed to begin the peacekeeping mission when the violence broke out. Some people have already said that the French peacekeepers did not do enough to stop the violence.
The French government has said it is investigating the issue, but the problem with the French government promise is that it is said the government was informed about the abuses by its forces in the CAR, in late July 2014. The French Defense Ministry confirmed this.
Many in the CAR are therefore saying that the French government can never be trusted, as it has done nothing significant to make sure that the perpetrators of these heinous crimes are brought to justice. Questions have also been raised about the reason for the French government to withhold such a delicate issue in secrecy, keeping all stakeholders involved in the crisis in the dark.
For the UN, the less said about its attitude towards the issue, the better. Many want to know the justification for the suspension of the aid worker who made this story known to the world. If the aid worker is not restored back to his post, it will be a slap on the face for UN in its activities in the CAR, according to independent observers.
The Seleka, a group of mostly Muslim rebels, staged a successful coup in the CAR in March of 2013, to oust a Christian-led government. The Seleka were, however, forced out of power in January of 2014, in a deal brokered by the East Africa regional leaders, but the country has since been embroiled in a civil war between the Seleka and an armed coalition called the Anti-Balaka, who are Christians.
Innocent civilians have suffered many abuses from these armed rebel groups and it is unfortunate that the French forces have also added to the misery of these weak and unprotected people, who are just victims of the situation.
The French government, the UN and all stakeholders who have interest in the CAR should push for those who have committed heinous crimes (whether French forces or rebels) to be brought to justice. The African Union in particular should do more for sanity to prevail and to avoid a disaster that will move the CAR from bad to worse. The French forces must be dealt with appropriately.
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