Peacekeeping and sex

Gabrielle Simm says that when she tells people she’s researching peacekeepers and sex, she tends to get their attention.

Is it a case of making love, not war? The lawyer and doctoral candidate in the Regulatory Institutions Network at ANU has a much more serious purpose.

her work has been inspired by cases of nongovernment organisation (NGO) workers trading food for sex in refugee camps; private military contractors trafficking women for sex work; and UN peacekeepers fathering and abandoning children in disregard of any legal responsibilities. She has also examined cases where peacekeepers have formed consensual relationships with local people, only to be ignored or reprimanded.  

Simm describes peacekeeping sex as a “complex issue” and says “the response to it so far has been fraught and unsatisfactory.”

She is expanding the definition of peacekeeper to include military personnel, private military contractors and NGO workers. “For local people it’s really hard to tell the difference between the different kinds of foreign actors,” she argues, citing examples where military contractors dress like soldiers and soldiers like civilians.

But the researcher says she also wants to compare the different responses to peacekeeping sex between these organisations.

The UN and NGOs have adopted a zero tolerance approach, banning soldiers and personnel from any sexual contact with local populations. This approach was introduced after allegations arose of aid workers and peacekeepers trading food for sex in West Africa in 2002. Similar incidents came to light in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2004, resulting in several high-level investigations. These led to proposals that nations contributing soldiers to peacekeeping missions should agree to investigate allegations of serious misconduct and to report back to the UN on the outcome of investigations. Another suggestion was that the DNA of peacekeeping troops should be collected before they go on mission, so that they could be identified in the case of any sex crimes or for the purposes of confirming paternity and requiring maintenance payments for any children born.

It’s not just the UN and NGOs that have been involved in peacekeeping sex scandals, either. In 1999 whistleblowers revealed that staff from the private US military contractor DynCorp had been involved in trafficking women from Eastern Europe into Bosnia to work in brothels. Some of the DynCorp workers were dismissed, but none were charged with criminal offences.

Simm says that one of the problems with international law in this area is that in practice, peacekeepers of all stripes are usually granted immunity from prosecution in the country to which they’re deployed, whether or not they’re entitled to it as a matter of law.

“In most cases they’re working in a state that doesn’t function,” she says. “Assuming there is a relevant criminal law, you need to take other measures than putting people in jail, because there are no functioning jails or court systems.”

Another problem is that organisations like the UN don’t have the ability to prosecute peacekeeping soldiers themselves, only to dismiss those found to have breached requirements. In recent years, the UN has been linking up its databases so that personnel once removed for sexual misconduct are not deployed again, but Simm says the system is far from perfect.

One of the first hurdles to overcome is that local people are seldom likely to come forward after they’ve been abused by a peacekeeper or NGO worker. “This is rarely the case in sexual assault, especially where assault is against a child,” Simm says. “There have been a number of studies where people have said they’d never report something like that. You’d need to rely on whistleblowers going to the media. You’d have to provide some good incentives for them doing that, as otherwise they’ve potentially lost their career.”

Rather than trying to introduce blanket laws, Simm argues that international organisations need to be taking a more nuanced approach to the issue, whether this is through providing incentives for whistleblowers or setting up other methods of detection.

She refers to the group Save the Children which has set up children’s committees that report back to representatives of donors and other NGOs. Any misconduct by Save the Children personnel is thus, in theory, identified and addressed lest the group lose donor support and the backing of its NGO peers.

“Another interesting approach is a peer review mechanism that has been set up by the humanitarian Accountability Partnership,” Simm says. “This is where three NGOs peer review another NGO. They go to the site and visit people, talk to the beneficiaries of assistance, they talk to donors, and then they do a report. That seems to be quite a good mechanism.”

Simm would also like to encourage peacekeeping organisations to explore concepts of responsive regulation, where sanctions for crimes and transgressions are more contextually driven, which might prove more effective in a context where the legal system is rarely functioning well.

Finally, the researcher is keen for peacekeeping organisations to acknowledge that consensual sexual relationships do occur, rather than turning a blind eye.

“I think it’s unrealistic to assume that they’re all abusive,” Simm says. “It’s too easy for the UN to put in place all these blanket bans. I can understand why they do it as it gives soldiers, who might not be very well educated, one rule, and they have to follow the rule. But it seems that the UN is continually confronted with contrary examples and has to shut them out.”

Through her PhD Simm hopes to intervene in the debates currently underway on the role of international law in regulating NGOs and private military security companies.

“This is a very complex area, and you can’t just make one rule that fits every situation,” she says.