YouSaid · the spoken record

Blakemore

lines on the record
7
first
2018-09-12
most recent
2018-09-12
sittings or episodes
1
sources
un-security-council

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  1. “So I will end with the words of a woman in Haiti, who told us: "I told them what he [the soldier] did to me. But they never told me what happened to him. Until I know what happened to him, I will never have peace".”

    2018-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8349 (2018) · source

  2. “Everyone knows who has been with the peacekeepers." That was from a 12-year-old girl in Haiti. The abuse is not hidden. "Everyone knows who is doing it", a little boy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo told us. If everyone knows who is doing it, then it is incumbent upon all of us to act to prevent it. Keeping Children Safe calls on world leaders to champion the safety of children at the highest levels by requiring all organizations involved in peacekeeping to implement robust international child-safeguarding standards, including having advocates for victims' rights, to prevent abuse, to protect the rights and dignity of victims and survivors and to help bring perpetrators to justice. But if we are going to have any real and sustained impact on this issue, then it is critical that we keep listening to the voices of those victims.”

    2018-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8349 (2018) · source

  3. “What will happen to us?" Many women and their children suffer ongoing stigma and discrimination: "Everyone knows who is a MINUSTAH baby. They say things about us. They treat our children differently." Child sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers is well known about within communities. Here is what one 13-year-old girl in the Central Central African Republic told us: "Sometimes they just ask you to take your clothes off so they can take photographs. But sometimes they say you are their girlfriend. Those ones give more money and help. But if you get pregnant they find someone else." Many of the children describe the ongoing impact of being known to be exploited or abused: "We can't go back to school because everyone knows. The others, they won't come close to us. The teachers don't want us there.”

    2018-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8349 (2018) · source

  4. “Before we did not need to make money like this, but now there is no work or food." One woman in the Democratic Republic of the Congo told us: "Some of them pay money. But they also give you food or tarpaulin or things we need. Where else can we get these things?" Another woman in the Democratic Republic of the Congo told us: "We stand near the bases because they come out looking for us at night." Sometimes babies are born as a result, and women are left with little or no support for themselves or the child. A young woman in the Central African Republic told us: "They say they will pay for the baby. Many do not, but he did pay some money. But when he left the money stopped. Now I cannot go to school. I cannot afford to send my baby to school.”

    2018-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8349 (2018) · source

  5. “A significant proportion of the victims have been children. All organizations have the responsibility to safeguard the people they serve, but the extreme imbalance of power between peacekeeping personnel, on the one hand, and the people whom they have been sent to serve, on the other, makes it essential that robust safeguarding systems be in place. Too often, however, victims have no way of reporting the abuse, no medical or psychosocial care and no access to justice. The organizations that fail to protect them continue putting them at risk, and the abusers go unpunished. A mother in Haiti explained to us the desperate situations in which this sexual exploitation takes place: "We know which bars they go to. They come there to buy sex. I need the money to feed my children.”

    2018-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8349 (2018) · source

  6. “Since then, in partnership with the University of Reading, we have been researching evidence-based solutions to addressing abuse in the context of peacekeeping, with a particular focus on ensuring that organizations do all they can to prevent abuse, and, if abuse does occur, that they ensure that the rights and wellbeing of victims are paramount. I am going to share some of the stories of victims who have taken part in that research. The vast majority of peacekeeping personnel perform their jobs with courage, dedication and professionalism. Yet in conflicts and crises across the world, peacekeepers have subjected people in situations of extreme physical and psychological vulnerability to rape, trafficking, violence and abuse, including demanding sex for the basics of survival - food, shelter, education and medicine.”

    2018-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8349 (2018) · source

  7. “Ms. Blakemore: I thank you, Ambassador Haley, for inviting me to speak on this important topic. My name is Sarah Blakemore and I am the the Chief Executive Officer of Keeping Children Safe, an international non-governmental organization (NGO) that works with organizations in almost every country of the world to protect children and adults at risk from all types of abuse. The issue of preventing abuse by peacekeepers is a particular concern to Keeping Children Safe because its establishment, in 2002, coincided with the exposure of widespread sexual exploitation and abuse carried out by peacekeeping personnel and staff, in more than 40 humanitarian aid agencies, of children in refugee camps in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.”

    2018-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8349 (2018) · source