"Despite years of 'zero tolerance' of the sexual abuse crisis by United Nations' peacekeepers, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (CAR), which has been at the center of the worst U.N. sexual abuse scandal in years, is still a bureaucratic shambles when it comes to recording, investigating and keeping track of those crimes, as well as training its personnel to avoid them, according to a U.N. internal report.
Among other things, the 23-page document itemizes the controversial mission's spotty and often-delayed record-keeping of sex abuse allegations, glacial follow-up on investigations, lack of 'risk assessment' examinations of potential problems at more than half of its 37 operating bases where sexual abuse allegations have occurred, and other jaw-dropping issues of delay and neglect.
The leadership of the 10,700-member peacekeeping force, known by its acronym of MINUSCA, has not yet even come up with a final version of a communications campaign to encourage the battered citizens of CAR to repel and report peacekeeper sexual abuse -- or enough safe places where alleged victims of such crimes can report the abuse in private.
The main reason, the report says, is that the vital outreach program 'had to be included in the mission-wide communication strategy that was still pending finalization by the MINUSCA Public Information Office.'
The snapshot provided by members of the U.N.'s watchdog Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) of MINUSCA's sloppy and erratic efforts to handle the sexual abuse crisis go a substantial way to illustrate what U.N. critics have long called its pernicious 'culture of impunity' regarding sexual abuse, which the U.N.'s top leadership has said repeatedly it intends to eradicate..."