The United Nations last week confronted the Vatican over its handling of decades of undoubted crimes against children by its clergy. Thousands of cases have showed up in investigations by local and national governments where priests or others under the Roman Catholic church raped or seriously abused children. There is no longer any doubt that church authorities covered up these crimes. But the UN investigation is arguably the most tainted such procedure ever, since the UN itself also has effectively condoned and covered up massive, continuing sexual crimes against children by its own staff and peacekeepers.
The sad and chilling fact is that the confrontation of Vatican officials by the UN is so hypocritical that it risks being regarded as insincere. There is a major problem with a UN probe of the hugely immoral and possibly criminal behaviour of the Vatican. The problem is that the UN faces the same charges. By pointing its finger of accusation at the Vatican, the UN simply serves to remind alert world citizens how the UN has failed to account for its own cover-up of shocking crimes and amoral behaviour.
In 2002, the then-secretary-general of the UN, Kofi Annan, commented on old and increasing numbers of sex crimes and child abuse by UN staff and peacekeeping forces. "Sexual exploitation and abuse by humanitarian staff cannot be tolerated," he wrote. "It violates everything the United Nations stands for." But not everything. One thing the UN stands for, and is not trying to demonstrate to the world and the Vatican with its sex-abuse hearings, is accountability.
In 2009, Zambian scholar Muna Ndulo assembled a document on "The United Nations Responses to the Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Women and Girls by Peacekeepers". It showed hundreds if not thousands of case-specific allegations where the UN failed even to investigate. A US employee, for example, fathered and abandoned babies in three countries _ Haiti, East Timor and Congo. Staff employees of the UN picked up and abused children as young as 12 in their official UN vehicles while supposedly trying to protect the population of South Sudan _ for two years beginning in 2005. In the next two years, the UN received reports from its own staff of 450 cases of "misconduct".
The aid group Save the Children assembled its own report of alleged abuses by the "blue helmets", or UN peacekeepers. The accusations came from Save the Children employees and workers. They covered sickening incidents of both rape and trafficking of young girls. A report from Liberia accused the peacekeepers of trading food for sex with youngsters as young as eight. Similar tales of withholding food until after sex with children came from African, Bosnia and _ close to home _ Cambodia for two years in the early 1990s, and East Timor for six years beginning in 1999. Exactly when people most needed the protection of international peacekeepers, some members in the blue helmets were abusing them and their children.
As with the Catholic church and its protective secrecy to shield perverted and abusive priests, the UN has ignored, covered up or swept away the known and alleged actions against women and children by its staff and peacekeepers. The UN's despicable cover-up cheapens its investigation of virtually the same criminal or moral crimes by priests and archbishops.