UN peacekeeping reforms long overdue

deepikaglobal.com - U.N. fears peacekeepers commit sex abuse worldwide:
"''We think this will look worse before it begins to look better,'' Jane Holl Lute, assistant secretary general for peacekeeping operations, told reporters. ''We expect that more information will come from every mission on allegations. We are prepared for that.'' The undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, said that up to now the U.N. had avoided identifying countries that were slow to court-martial their troops but that he had demanded action within weeks in some cases."

All decent people are outraged by the growing sex crimes scandal involving "soldiers" in at least five of the sixteen current peacekeeping missions around the world. Yet one can't help finding in the latest pledges by UN officials to clean up their act more than a whiff of hypocrisy. There have been scandalous acts, sexual and otherwise, among UN peacekeepers for many years. Everything from Belgians dangling an African boy over an open fire to Kofi Annan's guilty foreknowledge of the Rwandan genocide when he was head of peacekeeping operations.