Statement of Dr. Nile Gardiner,

Fellow in Anglo-American Security Policy

The Heritage Foundation.

House Committee on International Relations:
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations

Mr. Chairman, and distinguished Members of the House International Relations Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations. Thank you for holding today's hearing on an extremely important issue: widespread abuses carried out by United Nations personnel against refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and implications for U.N. peacekeeping reform.

This hearing will undoubtedly shine a huge spotlight on a major scandal in the heart of Africa, which has until now received relatively little attention from Congress and the world's media. In the Congo, acts of great evil and barbarism have been perpetrated by United Nations peacekeepers and civilian personnel entrusted with protecting some of the weakest and most vulnerable women and children in the world. Congress has a vital role to play in helping ensure that those responsible are brought to justice. It is my hope also that this hearing will help prevent abuses on this scale from ever occurring again in current and future U.N. peacekeeping operations.

Personnel from the U.N. Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo stand accused of at least 150 major human rights violations.[1] This is almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg, and the scale of the problem is likely to be far greater.

The crimes involve rape and forced prostitution of women and young girls across the country, including inside a refugee camp in the town of Bunia, in northeastern Congo. The alleged perpetrators include U.N. military and civilian personnel from Nepal, Morocco, Tunisia, Uruguay, South Africa, Pakistan, and France. The victims are defenseless refugees, many of them children, who have already been brutalized and terrorized by years of war and who looked to the U.N. for safety and protection. The U.S. Congress should act to ensure that the U.N. personnel involved are brought to justice and that such barbaric abuses are never repeated.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has acknowledged that "acts of gross misconduct have taken place."[2] A draft United Nations report has described sexual exploitation by U.N. personnel in the Congo as "significant, widespread and ongoing."[3] In the words of William Lacy Swing, Annan's special representative to the Congo, "We are shocked by it, we're outraged, we're sickened by it. Peacekeepers who have been sworn to assist those in need, particularly those who have been victims of sexual violence, instead have caused grievous harm."[4]

This scandal raises serious questions about U.N. oversight of its peacekeeping operations and the culture of secrecy and lack of accountability that pervade the U.N. system. The fact that abuses of this scale are taking place under U.N. supervision is astonishing, and it is inconceivable that officials in New York were unaware of the magnitude of the problem at an early stage.

There are major doubts surrounding the effectiveness and scope of the U.N.'s own internal investigation into the Congo scandal, conducted by the Office of Internal Oversight Services, headed by Under Secretary General Dileep Nair.[5] A confidential U.N. report obtained by The Washington Post revealed that "U.N. peacekeepers threatened U.N. investigators investigating allegations of sexual misconduct in Congo and sought to bribe witnesses to change incriminating testimony."[6] According to the Post, the report also cites instances where peacekeepers from Morocco, Pakistan, and possibly Tunisia "were reported to have paid, or attempted to pay witnesses to change their testimony."

The Congo abuse scandal is the latest in a string of scandals that have hit U.N. peacekeeping operations across the world. Indeed, it appears that U.N. peacekeeping missions frequently create a predatory sexual culture, with refugees the victims of U.N. staff who demand sexual favors in exchange for food, and U.N. troops who rape women at gunpoint. Allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct by U.N. personnel stretch back at least a decade, to operations in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. Despite previous U.N. investigations, and Kofi Annan's declaration of a policy of "zero tolerance" toward such conduct, little appears to have changed in the field.[7]

The United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC)

Established in 1999, MONUC is currently authorized by Security Council Resolution 1493. It is the world's second biggest U.N. peacekeeping mission, with a total of 13,950 uniformed personnel, including 13,206 troops, 569 military observers and 175 civilian police. In addition, there are 735 international civilian personnel and 1,140 local civilian staff. 47 U.N. member states have contributed military personnel, and 20 countries have contributed civilian police personnel toward MONUC.[8] The MONUC Force Commander is Major-General Samaila Iliya of Nigeria.

The biggest peacekeeping contingents (based on September 2004 figures) are from Uruguay, (1,778 soldiers), Pakistan (1,700), South Africa (1,387), Bangladesh (1,304), India (1,302), Nepal (1,225), and Morocco (801).[9] There are no U.S. personnel serving as peacekeepers or military observers with MONUC.

U.S.Funding of MONUC

An issue of great concern to Congress should be the scale of U.S. funding for the Congo operation. U.N. peacekeeping operations paid for with U.S. public funds should be accountable to American taxpayers, who expect U.N. officials and peacekeepers to conduct themselves with honor and integrity.

The United States and is the biggest financial contributor to MONUC, providing about a third of its operating budget of $746 million. The U.S. contribution to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Congo has been substantial. If 2005 figures are included, the U.S. will have contributed roughly three quarters of a billion dollars ($759 million) toward MONUC since 2000, according to State Department figures. The U.S. is expected to contribute $249 million toward MONUC in FY 2005, and $207 million in FY 2006.[10]

U.S. Funding for Worldwide UN Peacekeeping Activities

The United States is the world's biggest contributor to U.N. peacekeeping operations, contributing 27 percent of the total worldwide U.N. peacekeeping budget. The U.S. is expected to contribute over $1 billion toward U.N. peacekeeping activities across the world in FY 2006.

Over the past decade the United States has made a huge contribution toward U.N. peacekeeping operations. Since 2001, including 2005 figures, the United States will have contributed $3.59 billion toward U.N. international peacekeeping operations.[11]

According to the General Accountability Office (GAO), the United States gave the U.N. $3.45 billion in direct contributions to conduct peacekeeping operations between 1996 and 2001.[12] This figure is dwarfed by the estimated $24.2 billion in indirect contributions made by the US to help support 33 U.N. peacekeeping operations in 28 countries during that five-year period. [13]

There are currently 428 U.S. personnel serving in U.N. peacekeeping operations across the world, in the Middle East, Kosovo, Georgia, East Timor, Liberia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, and Haiti. They are overwhelmingly civilian police, including 309 serving with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). There are only 6 American troops under U.N. command (three in Haiti and three in Liberia).[14]

Questions for Congress

There are many key questions that arise from the scandal and which merit congressional scrutiny:

• Why has the U.N. failed to effectively prevent abuse by its personnel given its tarnished record in previous peacekeeping operations? 
• Why did the U.N. take six months to release its own internal report on the Congo abuse scandal? 
• To what extent were the U.N. Secretary-General and other senior U.N. officials aware of the abuses by U.N. personnel in the Congo before media reports began to surface? 
• Can the U.N. be relied upon to objectively conduct its own investigations into allegations against its peacekeepers and civilian staff? 
• How can U.N. peacekeepers and civilian personnel accused of human rights abuses be prosecuted for their crimes? 
• What measures can be implemented to ensure that future U.N. peacekeeping operations are transparent, accountable, and run in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? What mechanisms should be put in place to ensure external oversight of U.N. operations?
• What impact should the Congo scandal have on future U.S. contributions to the U.N. peacekeeping budget?

Key Recommendations for Congress and the United States Government

• The United States should call for a Security Council-backed fully independent investigation into the MONUC abuse scandal, to cover all areas of the MONUC operation. In addition there should be independent investigations launched into allegations of abuse by U.N. personnel in other U.N. peacekeeping operations, including Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Burundi. 
• The United States Government should pressure U.N. member states to prosecute their nationals accused of human rights violations while serving as U.N. peacekeepers. 
• The U.N. should lift diplomatic immunity for its own staff accused of criminal acts in the Congo, opening the way for prosecution. 
• The Security Council should exclude countries whose peacekeepers have a history of human rights violations from future operations. The U.N. should publicly name and shame those countries whose peacekeepers have carried out abuses in the Congo. 
• The U.N. should make publicly available all internal reports relating to the Congo scandal, and outline the exact steps it plans to take to prevent the sexual exploitation of refugees in both existing and future U.N. peacekeeping operations.
• Fully independent commissions of inquiry should handle all future investigations into human rights abuses by U.N. personnel. 
• An external oversight body, completely independent of the U.N. bureaucracy and staffed by non-U.N. officials, but backed by a Security Council mandate, should be established to act as a watchdog over U.N. operations, including humanitarian programs and peacekeeping operations.
• The United States should also set up its own U.N. oversight unit, answerable to Congress, specifically charged with monitoring the use of American contributions to United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. This could be funded by diverting part of the annual U.S. assessed contribution for the United Nations. 
• Congress should withhold a percentage of the U.S. contribution to U.N. peacekeeping operations unless U.N. personnel responsible for criminal activity are brought to justice.
• Serious consideration should be given to the establishment of an elite training academy for U.N. peacekeeping commanders, backed by the Security Council.

Conclusion

The Congo episode has further undermined the credibility of the United Nations and raises serious questions regarding the effectiveness of the U.N.'s leadership and the U.N.'s Office of Internal Oversight Services. The U.N. has consistently failed to publicize, prevent and punish the criminal behavior of its own personnel in trouble spots across the world.

The sexual abuse scandal in the Congo makes a mockery of the U.N.'s professed commitment to uphold basic human rights. U.N. peacekeepers and the civilian personnel who work with them should be symbols of the international community's commitment to protecting the weak and innocent in times of war. The exploitation of some of the most vulnerable people in the world-refugees in a war-ravaged country-is a shameful episode, a betrayal of trust, that will haunt the United Nations for years to come.