Un Peacekeepers Traded Food For Sex

[Bruce]

Below is an article I copied off fox news. The underage girls in the article are NOT identified as 'children' so I assume they are teenagers and not little kids. My problem with this article and other like it is that they are 1. based on western values, 2. do not offer any real alternative for the girls. We all read and say (most of us that is) that is a shame, they should know better, and then we move to the next article. Most do not realize that if these (and millions of other girls across the planet) did NOT have sex for food, they and their families would starve. So...... guys, before you say this is wrong.... what do YOU propose as an alternative for the girls and their families? As it applies to the Philippines, we all know there is no shortage of parents encouraging their girls to seek out a white guy.... Girls are raised seeing a foreigner man as a 'prize' and they seem to have no problems trying to attract the attention of us foreigners. When it comes down to sex for food or starvation.... how can we blame the girls? Same logic for education or a place to live. So here is my problem with these kinds of articles... they offer NOTHING for the girl or family to replace the sex for food et al deal. What is a girl and her family supposed to do? Don't even think about blaming the government. There are just too many poor to help them all and in the US / UK, the introduction of a welfare / dole system has back fired so badly it is bankrupting the countries! I, you / we can not stop the girls from what they do and we can't stop the men from taking advantage of the offers.... but there should be a fair trade. My solution is to take a more neutral position on the judging aspect and instead, try to set standards to be met and to protect the girls from harm. By standards, I mean sex for a sack of rice as compared to sex for a 'yum' at jollibees... there should be some standards so a penny pinching tightwad white guy at least pays a fair value for the illegal product. There should be a follow thru on any promises made. You say you will pay her school fees for a year? Then DO IT. There is a known and measurable power and education imbalance between the foreigner and the girl. Having sex is one thing but to manipulate and then reneg on any promises made is actually worse in my mind than the sex (again, no children, talking willing teenagers) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

United Nations peacekeepers in Ivory Coast enticed underage girls in a poor part of the West African nation to exchange sex for food, according to a United States Embassy cable released by WikiLeaks. The cable written in January 2010 focuses on the behavior of Beninese peacekeepers stationed in the western town of Toulepleu, an area that has been at the crosshairs of the nation's 10-year-long conflict. A random poll of 10 underage girls in Toulepleu by aid group Save The Children U.K. in 2009 found that eight performed sexual acts for Benin peacekeepers on a regular basis in order to secure their most basic needs. "Eight of the 10 said they had ongoing sexual relationships with Beninese soldiers in exchange for food or lodging," the diplomat wrote in the cable, citing information shared with the embassy by a protection officer. On Tuesday, United Nations spokesman Michel Bonnardeaux confirmed that in April, 16 Beninese peacekeepers were repatriated to Benin and are barred from serving in the U.N. following a yearlong investigation. "We see it as a command and control problem," said Bonnardeaux who spoke by telephone from New York. Of the 16, 10 were commanders and the rest were soldiers. The commanders, he said, "failed to maintain an environment that prevents sexual exploitation and abuse." Sexual misconduct by U.N. troops has been reported in a number of countries including Congo, Cambodia and Haiti -- as well as in an earlier incident involving Moroccan peacekeepers in Ivory Coast. In 2007, a 730-strong battalion of peacekeepers from Morocco was asked to suspend its activities in the northern Ivorian city of Bouake after the U.N. received allegations of sexual misconduct involving local girls. A report published a year later by Save the Children U.K. identified Ivory Coast as one of the places where sexual barter between peacekeepers and girls was occurring. The peacekeepers traded food as well as mobile phones for sex, the report said. The recently released cable identifies for the first time the Benin peacekeeping contingent. It also makes clear that the sexual exploitation continued through at least the last month of 2009, quoting a protection officer with Save the Children who spoke to the embassy in January 2010. The officer said that the "sexual exploitation and abuse problem among (United Nations) personnel is more extensive than is recognized." Parents were encouraging their daughters to sleep with the peacekeepers so they would provide for them, according to the cable. Bonnardeaux said that 42 allegations of sexual abuse by U.N. staff in Ivory Coast have been reported since 2007. Sixteen involved minors. None have been reported yet this year, according to U.N. records The story

http://www.foxnews.c.../#ixzz1WiZYf8qT

[Dave Hounddriver]

The article reminds me of an old Vietnam war movie, where the girl is going around saying 'me love you long time'. Perhaps the writer of the article is injecting a personal opinion into the facts. Could it be that the peacekeepers are nice guys who give food to the girls with no strings attached and THEN the parents tell their daughters that the man is obviously a good provider so she should have sex with him to keep him interested. Of course this is me injecting my personal opinion but then, I am not trying to sell newspapers.

[Bruce]

The article reminds me of an old Vietnam war movie, where the girl is going around saying 'me love you long time'. Perhaps the writer of the article is injecting a personal opinion into the facts. Could it be that the peacekeepers are nice guys who give food to the girls with no strings attached and THEN the parents tell their daughters that the man is obviously a good provider so she should have sex with him to keep him interested. Of course this is me injecting my personal opinion but then, I am not trying to sell newspapers.

5 dolla make you holla! Me love you long time! Ah yes Viet nam....... The common theme of these articles is rehashing, re presenting on the same old crap over and over. Each quoting the author of the other paper as the authority. We call these main stream 'thinkers'... PARROTS. They squawk the party line, stiffle free thinking and if you don't support their versions of what is right or wrong, then you are ignored. In order to get a degree in a psych field or child care field today you must be a 'party member'. These same people go to a 3rd world country and then 'save' the kids, get on the plane to go home telling each other what a good job they did and how they made a positive difference in these poor people's lives.... never again to return and see the damage they did. Never thinking about the families they left behind with no food or education opportunities or housing, the starving of the young kids because the older daughter was stopped from offering the only thing she had to offer, in a trade to help support the family. Does she 'like it' or want to do it? I don't know. But I do know that if she did not step up and make the offer, her family suffers. Girls / women have been selling sex for as long as humans have been around. Every effort to stop it so far has failed and only cause more problems and misery. Do I have a solution? NO I don't. But until there is a wide spread viable alternative to selling one's body to support the family, the practice will continue. And when the practice is interfeered with, the girls family suffers. No one wins! So I suggest governments and private efforts focus on the true child sex issues and stop the abuse of actual children. Assess the situation and make priorities. Focus on ONE thing and in my opinion, that focus should be on child molesters and not some teenage girl trying to find a an older man with money that is willing to help her family. I currently have 11 kids I am paying school fees for. Never had sex with any of them AND!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I like to think I am not alone! That most men my age (over 50) are not interested in teenage girls and if there was an organized method to help the poor, they would to a reasonable extent. Does anyone realize that a 50p tax per night on hotels (not pension houses) that are already charging 2,000p a night and way up would provide enough scholarship money to send thousand of Philippine children to school? Add to that the same 50p tax on every air plane seat into and out of the country would have a huge positive effect and if explained in say a sign at the air ports and hotels check in desk would stop any real bitching. If you can not afford and extra $1 into and out of the country and then add on an extra $1 a day for your 2-3 week hotel stay, then you should not be traveling at all. I have paid my next trip. PAL costs me $1132 USD. Add a $1 in and $1 out tax and I would not even notice! Edited September 2, 2011 by Bruce

[Dave Hounddriver]

Does anyone realize that a 50p tax per night on hotels

In combination with a post KuyaLee made, this got me thinking they should add a 50peso tax onto the 'short time' rooms. These rooms are already very cheap and the same room may be used a half dozen times a day which would add up to a lucrative tax at very small cost to the users. The problems are in administering the tax and seeing that the proceeds go to something like education or food for the poor. (Tongue in cheek but there is truth here:) Screw one and feed two.

[sjp52]

I feel the government is at fault. If the Filipino people could actually find a man or a woman who truly cared about the people especially the poor, I think they could put programs in place to feed the poor. I would bet if the government would tax those filthy rich people who have enough money to feed everyone and weed out all the people in high positions that are pocketing a lot of the money that is suppose to go to its rightful places they would be in a better position and have money to turn the country around. There were other countries before that were bad off like the Philippines but turned things around and improved As for those young girls that take food for sex, I think that is dead wrong. There are millions of Filipinos surviving without doing that and if we except it as the norm and say its ok we will actually be promoting it and making it grow. If you don,t think that what those girls are doing now will not affect their lives you are so wrong. Their self esteem will be diminished. It just doesn,t seem right that those men have to take so much from those girls for a lousy meal. Theres not a lot we can do to change it. The Government needs to step up and do its job. Good luck with that

[Dave Hounddriver]

If you don,t think that what those girls are doing now will not affect their lives you are so wrong. Their self esteem will be diminished. It just doesn,t seem right that those men have to take so much from those girls for a lousy meal

Why would their self esteem be diminished? Would their self esteem be diminished they were boys bedding girls for cash or only in the vice versa? What if the soldiers preferred girls who were older, would their self esteem be diminished? What are they 'taking' from those girls? Are they raping them? Or are the girls happy to give something back to the guys who are heros in their eyes? OK, it doesn't 'seem right' because of the way we were brought up. Does that make us right and those girls wrong? Maybe anything that feels good is bad for you? I'm not criticizing SJP for having this concept. I am criticizing western society for saying that it is better for the girls to starve than for the men to accept the comforts of a girl's body for having fed her and her family.

[Jollygoodfellow]

I'm not criticizing SJP for having this concept. I am criticizing western society for saying that it is better for the girls to starve than for the men to accept the comforts of a girl's body for having fed her and her family.

Would it not be better for the UN peace keepers and anyone for that matter to just offer food rather than have to have something in return for it?I think it is called taking advantage of the situation and because in this case we are talking about those who are meant to be in a position to protect the vulnerable they are not doing their job.

[Dave Hounddriver]

Would it not be better for the UN peace keepers and anyone for that matter to just offer food rather than have to have something in return for it?

Well that is close to what I am suggesting in post 2:

Could it be that the peacekeepers are nice guys who give food to the girls with no strings attached and THEN the parents tell their daughters that the man is obviously a good provider so she should have sex with him to keep him interested.

[Bruce]

There is a huge difference between what 'should happen' and what 'does happen'. All just theory and class room work. In the real world, people are hungry and sick and have little or no opportunities available to them. What most people don't realize is that there are narrow windows of opportunity that are predictable and part of normal human growth and development. Once that window closes, it never again opens. These windows start opening and closing as a woman becomes pregnant. As the fetus grows and baby as born and growing as a child and then a teenager. If the window is missed, it effects other windows in the future. The woman who washes your clothes.... Does anyone really think that you can drop her back into pharmacy school and make a pharmacy tech or (gasp!) a pharmacist out of her? Of course not. Those windows of learning opportunity have long passed. But for her (young) children, perhaps that window has not yet opened. It is all in timing and being able to take advantage of that timing. Once lost, you end up with a human that will not ever amount to anything greater than a person doing unskilled manual labor. Uneducated people have children that are not exposed to the proper stimuli and as such end up following their parents into the unskilled labor force. Generation after generation. Squatters are what they are and even IF they found a suitcase with 2,000,000 pesos in it, it would all be gone and they would be squatters again in a year or 2. It is the teenage girls from that enviroment that are looking for the quid pro quo opportunity which is selling their only (ass)et. By the time they are teenagers they already have missed the earlier windows of opportunity and as such are already limited and set in their future options.... except for the WILD CARD. That 'wild card' is the white guy, AKA the meal ticket, the lottery ticket. And it mixes in with that very human emotion, HOPE. If you look at the philippines as it is and then realize that air travel and changed Phils forever. Air travel brings in tourists and MONEY, into an area that normally, would not have this. So, these local girls who would normally end up in a relationship and having babies and a manual job if any job, can now 'possibly' get a white guy which opens up the possibilities beyond her and her family's normal reach. So I do not make a judgement on the girl, doing what she see other / older girls do, all clinging on the stories of the cousin or friends cousin that married a white guy, learned to drive a car and has food and clothes and house / lot! The western view is that she is being exploited and taken advantage of. But if you ask her or her family, they may have a very different view. In the west, daughters are (now) told to do good in school and grow up to be a lawyer or doctor or (gasp!) a model. In the poor families of Phils and other 3rd world countries, raise their daughters to grow up and look for a rich husband.....

[sjp52]

There is a huge difference between what 'should happen' and what 'does happen'. All just theory and class room work. In the real world, people are hungry and sick and have little or no opportunities available to them. What most people don't realize is that there are narrow windows of opportunity that are predictable and part of normal human growth and development. Once that window closes, it never again opens. These windows start opening and closing as a woman becomes pregnant. As the fetus grows and baby as born and growing as a child and then a teenager. If the window is missed, it effects other windows in the future. The woman who washes your clothes.... Does anyone really think that you can drop her back into pharmacy school and make a pharmacy tech or (gasp!) a pharmacist out of her? Of course not. Those windows of learning opportunity have long passed. But for her (young) children, perhaps that window has not yet opened. It is all in timing and being able to take advantage of that timing. Once lost, you end up with a human that will not ever amount to anything greater than a person doing unskilled manual labor. Uneducated people have children that are not exposed to the proper stimuli and as such end up following their parents into the unskilled labor force. Generation after generation. Squatters are what they are and even IF they found a suitcase with 2,000,000 pesos in it, it would all be gone and they would be squatters again in a year or 2. It is the teenage girls from that enviroment that are looking for the quid pro quo opportunity which is selling their only (ass)et. By the time they are teenagers they already have missed the earlier windows of opportunity and as such are already limited and set in their future options.... except for the WILD CARD. That 'wild card' is the white guy, AKA the meal ticket, the lottery ticket. And it mixes in with that very human emotion, HOPE. If you look at the philippines as it is and then realize that air travel and changed Phils forever. Air travel brings in tourists and MONEY, into an area that normally, would not have this. So, these local girls who would normally end up in a relationship and having babies and a manual job if any job, can now 'possibly' get a white guy which opens up the possibilities beyond her and her family's normal reach. So I do not make a judgement on the girl, doing what she see other / older girls do, all clinging on the stories of the cousin or friends cousin that married a white guy, learned to drive a car and has food and clothes and house / lot! The western view is that she is being exploited and taken advantage of. But if you ask her or her family, they may have a very different view. In the west, daughters are (now) told to do good in school and grow up to be a lawyer or doctor or (gasp!) a model. In the poor families of Phils and other 3rd world countries, raise their daughters to grow up and look for a rich husband.....

You talk about the people like they can never change. The reason they don,t change is because they have no hope. Us people with are fancy homes and cars have been raised with hope, That even though it is bad today things can change if you work at it.The problem is the government has not given them the tools to make these changes, good education, social programs, food banks, a lending hand. I commend you on your thoughts that the girls should not starve. I agree, I just think they should have better alternatives to feed their families. People that sell their bodies for food and money are affected as is stated in some forums ( you can take the girl out of the bar but you can,t take the bar out of the girl ). In most cases I feel this is true ( not all ). So this girl sells her body for food and ends of doing it for her whole life and maybe teaches her kids this is the way you earn a living ( not right ). This thinking like a westerner is bull. We eat sleep and talk the same. We are all just people. If things are no going right in my life then I look at lives of people that are going right and learn from that ( its called educating yourself ) You talk about the west, When people lose the opportunity to support themselves crime goes up, killing goes up. prostitution goes up. Do we say but thats ok, No, the government changes things or tries to for the better so we have jobs and hope. Even the Filipino government knows it is wrong for a woman to have to sell her body for food and money ( they have laws ) but they look the other way like they do with most of their laws and that is why the Philippines is so screwed up today Bruce I feel you are a good person and you seem to be helping people and I wish more people could be more like you in that way, But this topic I have to agree to disagree with you. There are different ways to get your end results and their should be limits not because we say so but because we care and their government should start to care