Preventing “protectors to become predators”: can the United Nations stop sexual abuse and exploitation by un peacekeepers?

Abstract

The article, using as theoretical framework Lauren Wilcox's view of bodies in International Relations as well as discussions from postcolonial and feminist perspectives, examines how sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) occurs in the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations and how the organization has dealt with this issue. These practices are documented since the 1990s and affect mainly women and children in areas where UN peacekeeping missions are on the ground. The article concludes that the causes of this phenomenon are three: the context of vulnerability, the image that UN peacekeepers have of themselves and of the local population and the impunity enjoyed by them. Moreover, the answers given by the UN were reactive and not proactive. They depend on the goodwill of states and offer little support for survivors. We conclude that the UN and its peacekeeping missions are embedded in a Eurocentric and patriarchal logic where the bodies of locals are gendered and racialized. The UN would have the means to ensure that such violations do not occur if it had adopted tougher responses earlier such as an effective responsibilizing system and the Victims Fund, but changing the way the local population is perceived is necessary to avoid further SEA.