For decades, United Nations peacekeepers have been promoted as critical civilian lifelines amid some of the world’s most harrowing conditions. Yet those who have already endured violence, displacement and poverty still fear that those deployed to protect them may only amplify their suffering. 

Last month, Israel ignited international condemnation for firing on numerous bases belonging to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, the peacekeeping mission founded in 1978 under a Security Council resolution. While its target is Hezbollah, the Israel Defense Forces contend that the UN peacekeeping mission, largely funded by America, functioned in the pocket of the designated terrorist group. 

This is “extremely concerning because the United Nations is supposed to stay neutral and maintain peace,” the former Africa counterterrorism director for the Pentagon, Rudolph Atallah, tells The New York Sun. 

Captured Hezbollah fighters testified that the terrorist group paid money to the peacekeepers, who also hold a limited enforcement authority, to use their bases to conduct their operations, even taking charge of their security cameras to monitor the Israeli border.

The United Nations forces are also tasked with thwarting Hezbollah from engaging in terrorist behavior south of the Litani River, an objective the $507 million a year mission has for decades failed to accomplish, as Hezbollah has continued to strike out and forge an extensive labyrinth of underground tunnels.  

Missiles seized by the IDF in recent weeks are of Iranian, Communist Chinese, and Russian origins, transported into Lebanon despite the supervision of the United Nations troops. This paints a disturbing portrait of either a grossly incompetent or Hezbollah-enabling force, completely subject to the rules and whims of one of the largest terrorist groups on the planet. 

President of the operational and intelligence services firm the Ulysses Group, Andrew Lewis, tells the Sun that such disclosures are “incredibly serious” as America “provides the largest amount of funding to the United Nations every year.”

The United Nations has denied the allegations, with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres insisting that the peacekeepers will stay in their designated posts and that the UN would investigate “credible” accusations. 

“(United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) supports the Lebanese Armed Forces in extending State authority in southern Lebanon and in establishing an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon and (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon),” a United Nations Peacekeeping spokesperson tells the Sun. “In this regard, (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) has consistently reported on any unauthorized weapons it observes in the area of operations to the Security Council and to the Lebanese authorities.”

A Much Broader Problem 

Such controversy, however, is hardly the first to surround United Nations peacekeeping in recent times. 

“Again and again, the United Nations allows itself to be co-opted by those who wield power in the places where it delivers aid,” a senior fellow and the director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, David Adesnik, tells the Sun. “As a result, vast sums are diverted to vicious actors who are often responsible for the crisis in the first place. The UN has repeatedly shown that the imperative to build bigger programs and deliver more aid – even if it falls into the wrong hands — outweighs any pressure to maintain the integrity of its programs.”

The founding of these forces at large dates back to the creation of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in 1948. Since then, UN peacekeeping has evolved, with missions deployed to various conflict zones worldwide to maintain peace and security, protect civilians, and facilitate political solutions.

In recent years, allegations of serious misconduct by peacekeepers and peacekeeping staff have persisted, including gang rape, child sexual abuse, and sex trafficking. More than 1,200 incriminations of sexual abuse by peacekeepers have been reported since 2010, with over 30 missions implicated between 2010 and 2022.

Last year, eight South African peacekeepers operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo were detained on allegations of sexual abuse and accused of setting up brothels near their camps — a mere blip in the number of sexual misconduct claims that have beset United Nations missions in Africa as the humanitarian bureaucracy battles to stop the problem.  

Women and girls in the Central African Republic continue to suffer from sexual abuse and exploitation perpetrated by United Nations forces. Last June, 60 Tanzanian peacekeepers in the Central African Republic were sent home, with at least 11 members of the unit accused of exploitation and sexual abuse, with minors making up the ranks of some of the victims. A decade earlier, more than one hundred women and children claimed sexual abuse at the hands of peacekeepers in the embattled country. 

In 2021, the United Nations withdrew 450 peacekeepers in the central African nation of Gabon following abuse claims, but the file continues to grow. Over the past decade, allegations of sexual abuse, rape, trafficking, and exploitation by United Nations forces have also emerged in Liberia, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, Sierra Leone, and Mozambique.

Outside Africa, similarly horrific claims have been directed at troops in Bosnia, Cambodia, East Timor, Haiti and Iraq — with victims and activists aghast that the humanitarian organization has failed to curb the crimes or adequately compensate the survivors. 

In Haiti, women continue to grapple with the prolonged financial and emotional stigma and ramifications of bearing a child born from peacekeeper rape or exploitation, which ran shockingly rampant in the impoverished Caribbean country from 2004 until the troops’ withdrawal in 2017.

In 2010,adding insult to injury just months after the crippling earthquake that killed more than 220,000, survivors wrestled with a cholera outbreak that claimed the lives of thousands more people and brought back a disease that was eradicated half a century earlier.

The source of the infectious disease was a camp for United Nations peacekeepers hailing from Nepal. Despite the understandably bitter memories many Haitians have of the peacekeeping troops, the United States continues to push a draft resolution requesting another long-term peacekeeping operation to replace the Kenyan soldiers currently assisting police in stemming the extreme gang violence. 

Vetting and Prosecution of Peacekeepers

For every victim who reports a case, critics contend that many others go undocumented, with victims fearing stigmatization, shame and retaliation. Problems also spring from the notion that, in many cases, the UN relies on governments to vet soldiers for missions — and many governments have different views on prosecuting and regarding human rights abuses. 

A Peacekeeping spokesman tells the Sun that the “Secretariat, in collaboration with Member States, works to vet all personnel preparing to serve in a peacekeeping or special political mission to ensure that they do not have a prior history of misconduct, including sexual exploitation and abuse,” adding that “troop and police-contributing countries are required to certify that individuals being deployed have not committed, or were alleged to have committed, violations of international human rights law or international humanitarian law, or have been repatriated on disciplinary grounds from a (United Nations) operation.”

“Meanwhile, any personnel against whom an allegation of sexual exploitation and abuse has been substantiated through an investigation will be automatically barred from future service with the United Nations.  More needs to be done, and we are actively exploring ways to work with our Member State partners to ensure both transparency and accountability,” the spokesperson acknowledged.  

Since 2005, the United Nations has adopted a “comprehensive strategy” aimed at eradicating the abuses and vows to hold a “zero tolerance” policy toward abuses, although reporting suggests that impunity still reigns with very few peacekeepers prosecuted or convicted of their crimes.

The peacekeeping spokesperson affirmed that the troop- and police-contributing countries are primarily responsible for investigating and addressing disciplinary and criminal matters involving their personnel, emphasizing that the United Nations has strengthened its protocols, enhanced joint investigative efforts with Member States, and follows up to ensure appropriate actions are taken. 

According to Mr. Atallah, a major component of the problem also comes from the notion that peacekeepers typically hail from poorer countries in need of money. 

“For example, when Bangladesh, Nigeria, or others like it send troops, it is simply to get funding and equipment. The actual focus on peacekeeping is only a means of making money,” he continued.  

Mr. Lewis also pointed out that while these forces struggle to prevent violence and can sometimes instigate the violence they are there to stop, policymakers routinely still advocate for these futile missions as they don’t want their own countries to have to engage in operations on the ground. In other words, it is much easier to fund than deploy. 

“In Africa, many peacekeeping operations are run by African militaries instead of by American or major European countries who are often that best trained,” he explained. “As a result, we are seeing increasing rates of abuses committed by less professional forces.”

Support for Victims 

The United Nations has established a Victims’ Rights Advocate fund to assist communities and individuals harmed by peacekeeping missions, which “works to ensure that victims receive medical, psychosocial, and legal support, support them during UN and Member State investigations and support them to pursue paternity and child support claims,” the spokesperson stated. 

“While the (United Nations) does not compensate the victims financially, projects financed by the Trust Fund in Support of Victims of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse have allowed them to upgrade their skills so they can engage in income generating activities enabling them to rebuild their lives, or helped children fathered by peacekeepers go to school,” the spokesperson continued. 

Critics argue that this approach is far from adequate. The New Humanitarian reported in October that out of the mission’s $1.2 billion budget for the 2024 fiscal year, only $384,100 — 0.03 percent — was dedicated to survivor assistance. A peacekeeping spokesman tells the Sun that personnel found guilty of sexual misconduct are permanently barred from United Nations roles, and their payments are redirected to support victims. 

One peacekeeper told the Sun that many are frustrated and that the vast majority of troops have good and noble intentions — although they are often overshadowed by the scandals that routinely rock the profession. Peacekeepers perform their duties in some of the most hostile pockets of the planet, and more than 4,300 have died in the line of duty. 

The United States shoulders the most significant financial burden for peacekeeping missions, contributing approximately 27.89 percent of the total peacekeeping budget. This equates to roughly a quarter of the overall cost of all peacekeeping operations. This invitesthe question: Can Washington do more to usher in reforms? Or are such missions no longer worth the price tag? 

“Nothing will change until the countries that fund United Nations operations begin to demand accountability. But few countries want to spend their political capital on confronting an organization widely perceived as benevolent and altruistic,” Mr. Adesnik surmised. “What the United Nations can do that no one else can is get access and deliver aid to populations who would otherwise be unreachable.”

Others have a less optimistic solution to the problem. “There is not much the United States can do,” Mr. Atallah added. “The corruption is too deep.”