In a blow to victims of human trafficking worldwide, a massive child sex ring was exposed in Haiti — involving international ‘peacekeepers’ with the United Nations as well as other high-level officials from around the world — and no one is going to jail.
For years, UN peacekeepers, their high-level commanders, and other ‘personnel’ from around the globe came to Haiti for sex with boys and girls as young as 12.
“I did not even have breasts,” said a girl, known as V01 — Victim No, according to a report out of the Associated Press.
After Haiti’s downfall from a tropical paradise resort destination, hundreds of children were left homeless and many of them without parents. This easy prey then attracted the world’s most vile predators.
More than 300 children have come forward in the last decade with these claims and only a tiny fraction of those accused have ever faced any form of accountability.
One of the reasons these sickos aren’t charged is because when it comes to keeping its peacekeepers in check, the UN passes the buck. So, as reports of sexual abuse and child exploitation pour in to the UN (2,000 over just the last 12 years), the countries sending troops either remain ignorant or deliberately refuse to hold these people accountable.
As the Free Thought Project reported earlier this year, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric explained how they pass the buck in situations like this.
“So obviously we’ll keep an eye on this. But as we’ve said, it is the responsibility of member states to fully investigate and hopefully prosecute crimes. The fight against impunity for these horrendous actions has to be a partnership between the UN and member states,” Dujarric said.
Given the nature of child sex trafficking and its ties to the elite, it is likely that these countries are covering it up as any investigation into these crimes would possibly expose those in positions of power.
According to the report in the AP:
The AP interviewed alleged victims, current and former U.N. officials and investigators and sought answers from 23 countries on the number of peacekeepers who faced such allegations and, what if anything, was done to investigate. With rare exceptions, few nations responded to repeated requests, while the names of those found guilty are kept confidential, making accountability impossible to determine.
The problem of sexual abuse and child exploitation among UN peacekeepers and their leaders has become so rampant that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was forced to address it last month.
“Let us declare in one voice: We will not tolerate anyone committing or condoning sexual exploitation and abuse. We will not let anyone cover up these crimes with the U.N. flag,” Guterres said.
However, as the AP points out, these words mean very little given the sheer length of the abuse and the same rhetoric being used repeatedly by the UN.
More than a decade ago, the United Nations commissioned a report that promised to do much the same thing, yet most of the reforms never materialized.
For a full two years after those promises were made, the children in Haiti were passed around from soldier to soldier. And in the years since, peacekeepers have been accused of sexual abuse the world over.
In one particularly grim case in Haiti, a teenage boy said he was gang-raped in 2011 by Uruguayan peacekeepers who filmed the alleged assault on a cellphone. Dozens of Haitian women also say they were raped, and dozens more had what is euphemistically called “survival sex” in a country where most people live on less than $2.50 a day, the AP found.
Mario Joseph, a Haitian lawyer is attempting to change this paradigm. For the past few years, Joseph has fought to get compensation for victims a deadly cholera strain linked to Nepalese peacekeepers that killed an estimated 10,000 people, according to the AP.
Now, he’s taken on the case of the Haitian child sex ring.
“Imagine if the U.N. was going to the United States and raping children and bringing cholera,” Joseph said in Port-au-Prince. “Human rights aren’t just for rich white people.”
U.S. Sen. Bob Corker is also attempting to force accountability among the UN.
“If I heard that a U.N. peacekeeping mission was coming near my home in Chattanooga,” he told AP, “I’d be on the first plane out of here to go back and protect my family.”
Peter Gallo, a former U.N. investigator familiar with the case, explained to the AP how the system is setup in such a way that it seemingly facilitates this abuse.
“It’s an indictment of how the whole U.N. system works,” Gallo told the AP.
In spite of the rampant and unchecked child rape, the United Nations maintains that they are still contributing to the stability in the region.
“I would not say we have achieved everything we set out to do, but we are engaged in a process of continuous improvement that any harmful effect on the local populations could be minimized, if not completely eradicated,” Atul Khare, the U.N.’s head of field support which oversees the conduct and discipline of peacekeepers, said.
However, the locals — who’ve endured nearly a decade of hell at the hands of the organization whose mission is ostensible peace — aren’t buying it.
“I’d like to see my attacker face to face and tell him how he has destroyed my life,” said 21-year-old Melida Joseph who was raped by a UN Peacekeeper. “They’ll look at this as one big joke,” she said. “As far as the U.N. goes, they came here to protect us, but all they’ve brought is destruction.” (For more from the author of “UN Peacekeepers Caught Running Massive Child Sex Ring — Not One Person Jailed” please click HERE)
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