Accountability and sexual exploitation and abuse in peace operations

ABSTRACT

In March 2016, the United Nations Security Council adopted its first resolution devoted entirely to the prevention of peacekeeper sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) in peace operations. This article examines resolution 2272 by drawing on past practice and the perspective of those at mission sites—namely, Timor-Leste—arguing that the mechanism it establishes—repatriation—is limited in its capacity to prevent SEA and provide justice outcomes. The article demonstrates the pervasive sense of powerlessness regarding SEA and the impunity of those who do perpetrate SEA. The article further situates the issue of SEA by peacekeepers in the post-conflict (gendered) context in which it occurs, arguing that the resolution does not challenge the underlying norms and gendered relations of power that underpin peace operations. Instead, the resolution frames SEA as chiefly an issue of embarrassment for the United Nations and makes scant mention of the populations that peace operations are mandated to protect, as well as the perspectives and needs of victims of SEA.

KEYWORDS:

• Impunity
• peacekeeping
• peace operations
• sexual exploitation and abuse
• Timor-Leste
• United Nations

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on this text, as well as Dr Jasmine-Kim Westendorf, Dr Christine Agius and Hannah Loney for their feedback. An early opinion piece on resolution 2272 by the author appeared as a blog on Women Are Boring.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sarah Smith is an Adjunct Researcher at Swinburne University of Technology and is currently lecturing at Swinburne University and Monash University, Melbourne. Her research examines the gender dimensions of recent trends in hybridisation and ‘the local turn’ in building peace.

Notes

1 The interviews were conducted with Swinburne University ethics approval (SUHREC Project No. 2012/083).

2 Moreover, as Simić (2012) has demonstrated, not all peacekeeper–civilian relationships are characterised by exploitation and abuse.

3 See http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/images/SEA_infographic_v10-02.jpg.

4 This is of approximately 125,000 personnel serving across 16 peace operations in 2015.

5 From the Department of Peacekeeping Operations’ figures as of August 2016. See http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/contributors/2016/aug16_1.pdf.