http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/m-n/mcelroy/2005/mcelroy030305.htm

March 3, 2005
by Wendy McElroy

The shadows of children allegedly raped by United Nations peacekeepers in
the Congo and the women allegedly molested by a top U.N. official fall
across the 49th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women.

From this past Monday to March 11, the U.N. will meet in New York City to
review global progress on the "women's human rights agreement" known as the
Beijing Platform (1995).

Over 6,000 advocates of women's rights will attend.

How can a self-respecting woman, let alone a feminist, legitimize the U.N.
through her presence? The CSW should be in the forefront of those crying out
for justice and U.N. accountability. Instead, the CSW will almost certainly
call for expanding the U.N.'s power and funding.

Rage will be directed instead at President Bush who has already created
pre-meeting controversy. On Thursday, the Bush administration signaled its
refusal to renew an unconditional commitment to the Beijing Platform, a
declaration of women's rights promoted by the Clintons, which many consider
to be a radical feminism's global agenda.

Bush is balking because the declaration is seen to legitimize abortion as a
"human right." Given the widespread reports that the U.N. was complicit in
China's forced abortion policy, the administration's caution about how the
Platform will be interpreted and implemented is justified.

But if abortion is center stage, a more fundamental question still remains:
By what moral standard is the U.N. a proper stage on which to negotiate
women's rights? How much blood and corruption has to splatter before the
U.N.'s moral authority is washed away?

Its credibility on human rights has been broken beyond repair by the
oil-for-food scandal that, as a FOX News series stated, "ended up with
Saddam Hussein pocketing billions to become the biggest graft-generating
machine" in history.

Its integrity on women's rights was destroyed in 2001 by the surging traffic
in under-aged prostitutes in Bosnia. The traffic was not only created by the
arrival of tens of thousands of male U.N. personnel who sought prostitutes
but also by behind-the-scenes involvement by U.N. personnel.

The female staff member who blew the whistle was fired, later to be
exonerated as the evidence unfolded.

The intervening years have not improved the U.N.'s record.

Approximately 50 U.N. personnel currently face some 150 allegations of
sexual abuse, most of them involving children, in the Democratic Republic of
the Congo. The situation has been labeled "the sex-for-food
scandal" because
children traded sex for the handful of food they needed to live.

Reports from the Congo surfaced last year. An article in December's London
Times stated, "When the police arrived the man was allegedly about to rape a
12-year-old girl."

The accused serial rapist and pedophile was a U.N. expert in the $700
million-a-year effort to rebuild the war-ravaged nation. Anneke Van
Woudenberg of the Human Rights Watch organization, states, "The U.N. is
there for their protection, so when the protectors become violators, this is
particularly egregious."

The U.N. tends to stonewall such accusations despite its "zero tolerance"
policy toward sexual abuse. When ABC's 20/20 confronted William Swing, head
of the Congo's U.N. peacekeeping mission, he blamed the problem on a small
number of miscreants. He emphasized the remedial measures taken-- such as
curfews and prohibitions against fraternization with prostitutes.

ABC's cameras, however, caught a group of peacekeepers out after the curfew
with prostitutes at a bar. When Swing commented, "Perhaps my senior
management...wasn't aware of it," ABC pointed out that several people at the
bar were from senior management.

Investigative journalist David Ross explains that the abuse is a by-product
of the de facto immunity from law enjoyed by U.N. personnel. Ross writes,
"Peacekeeping troops come from U.N. member states and are only accountable
to their own governments. U.N. civilian employees enjoy immunity from local
prosecution and as a result tend not to face charges in countries where they
are stationed."

Perhaps this explains why investigative reports now suggest that sexual
abuse by U.N. "peacekeepers" is worldwide.

This could be good news. If there is a structural "incentive" to
abuse, then
abuse could be minimized by changing the structure. But reform requires the
one thing that the U.N. seems determined to avoid: taking responsibility.

Consider the Lubbers scandal that played out earlier this month.

Ruud Lubbers, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, was accused of "unwanted
physical contact" with a female staff member in December 2003. The scandal
emerged only after the Independent, a UK newspaper, published details of a
confidential July, 2004 report from the U.N.'s Office of Internal Oversight
Services, which pointed to a pattern of sexual harassment.

Until then, Secretary General Koffi Annan declined to act.

The Independent's expose was published on Feb. 18; on Feb. 20, Lubbers
resigned at Annan's request.

The UN is no more forthcoming on the sex-for-food scandal. In response to a
blistering commentary by Michelle Malkin entitled "U.N.'s Rape of the
Innocents," Jane Holl Lute, Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping
Operations, repeated the standard line. A zero tolerance policy is being
enforced.

Moreover, she called Malkin "negligent" for not reporting on the U.N.'s
remedial measures.

This is not an agency that shoulders responsibility.

Which returns us to the question, why are feminists pretending that the U.N.
is a proper stage to discuss women's rights? No self-respecting woman would
walk through its doors.

Wendy McElroy


--
Men are everywhere that matters!





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