Tanzania is waiting for a report on sexual abuse cases which involved 69 countries including Tanzania reported to the United Nations (UN) against its peacekeepers last year in order to state its stance.
The Minister for Defence and National Service, Dr Hussein Mwinyi, told the ‘Daily News’ in Dar es Salaam that the country hadn’t yet received the report, saying the government would be on good position to state its stance after receiving it.
“We’ll be in good position to state the country’s stance on the matter tomorrow (today) after receiving and reviewing the report,” the Minister told this newspaper in a telephone interview.
Nearly 100 allegations of sexual exploitation across 69 countries were received by the UN against its peacekeepers last year with no Indian personnel involved in any wrongdoing, according to the world body’s new report.
Most number of peacekeepers accused of sexual abuse in 2015 were from Congo, Morocco, South Africa, Cameroon, Rwanda and Tanzania, the UN said in its latest report on special measures to protect people from crimes of sexual abuse and exploitation. There were 99 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse uncovered by the United Nations in 2015, the report said.
No Indians were among the peacekeepers accused of sexual abuse. “I’m ashamed to call myself a peacekeeper on some of these days when I see cases like this,” UN Under Secretary-General for Field Support Atul Khare told reporters here referring to the pregnancy of a 13-year old girl as he presented the findings of the report. “What we need to do is not detract from the good work which is done by hundreds of thousands of peacekeepers.
We need to find these culprits who bring a bad name to peacekeeping, who actually create problems within the country in which they find themselves, and most importantly who destroy young innocent lives.
And we need to punish them in a certain manner that nobody else in the future will ever think of doing that,” he said. India has strongly condemned the cases of sexual exploitation carried out by peacekeepers and stressed that it has a zero tolerance policy towards such conduct.
India has 7,798 peacekeepers in 10 UN missions across the world. India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin had told a session of the United Nations Special Committee for Peacekeeping Operations last month that “my delegation is appalled by the recent cases of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) which have surfaced in some of the UN Peacekeeping Operations.”
“My delegation strongly condemns these unpardonable acts when the protector becomes the perpetrator. We have a zero tolerance policy on SEA cases and would like that there is zero tolerance on such issues across the UN too,” he had said.
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