UN peacekeepers commit sex abuse
| August 9th, 2002From yesterday’s London Times: Woman sacked for revealing UN links with sex trade.
During her time in Bosnia as an investigator, Ms Bolkovac, 41, uncovered evidence of girls who refused to have sex being beaten and raped in bars by their pimps while peacekeepers stood and watched. She discovered that one UN policeman who was supposed to be investigating the sex trade paid £700 to a bar owner for an underage girl who he kept captive in his apartment to use in his own prostitution racket.
She detailed her findings in a series of explicit e- mails to DynCorp, but after first being demoted and transferred from the investigation she was sacked for allegedly falsifying her timekeeping records.
Charles Twiss, the tribunal chairman, said: “We have considered DynCorp’s explanation of why they dismissed her and find it completely unbelievable. There is no doubt whatever that the reason for her dismissal was that she made a protected disclosure and was unfairly dismissed.”
It’s wonderful that Ms. Bolkovac has been vindicated. But the article doesn’t mention it if any steps are being taken to prevent this happening again, nor does it say if the UN is still subcontracting to DynCorp. Noted with grim amusement: the contrast between Richard Monk - the British head of the operation, who praised the British workers for being “on the whole” a great example - and Ms. Bolkovac, who went out of her way to say that the sleazebag rapists included some British workers.
