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The United Nations should excuse itself from investigating its own peacekeeping troops who were involved in sexual assaults and rape against underage girls in the Central African Republic, Code Blue Campaign, a group that advocates against sexual abuse by the U.N. said in a statement.
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Report: French Commander Forced CAR Girls to Have Sex with Dog
"We are saying that the U.N. should excuse itself in the law enforcement in assessing the crimes and in determining who should hold responsibility and be accountable for those crimes,"Paula Donovan, co-director of the Code Blue Campaign and a director at the AIDS-Free World NGO, said in an online media briefing Monday.
"This is a conflict of interest and [the U.N.] needs to remove itself from the criminal side and focus entirely on the care of victims and allow the appropriate law enforcement officials to do their job."
The news comes less than two weeks after the same group interviewed several victims in the CAR uncovering how several U.N. peacekeepers and troops from the French intervention mission in the country were involved in appalling sexual abuse.
The Code Blue Campaign said in a report on March 30 that at least three girls were tied up and forced to have sex with a dog by a French commander in 2014 who later paid each one of them US$7 for the act.
Also ahead of the report, the U.N. said it learned of 108 new sexual abuse cases in CAR.
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Donovan added that as the U.N. has already failed to handle the issue despite several reports of the abuse, it was now time for the organization to allow member states, from which the troops are, to set up their own impartial committees and investigations to see who is responsible for the abuse.
However, the U.N. disagrees with the allegations that its investigators are being biased.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general, said his colleagues at "UNICEF and other agencies who are dealing with this issue, know how to do their jobs ... I don't think anyone is trying to bury these cases and trying to make them go away."
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