UN Bosnia monitors active in international trade in girls and women - General

Community Action, Dec 9, 2002

SAREJEVO -- Some United Nations police monitors engaged in sex trade offences in Bosnia and Herzegovina, instead of promoting the rule of law by using local police and investigating illegal activities, Human Rights Watch says in a recently released report.

A Human Rights Watch report, indicates that a small number of U.N. monitors, members of the International Police Task Force, were either customers or purchasers of trafficked women and girls and their passports, according to a report of the Local police often fail to investigate and arrest sex traffickers while blaming victims for their reluctance to testify. Bosnian police facilitate the trade by providing false documents, visiting brothels and at times, engaging the trade directly.

What punishment was meted out by the U.N. Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The report said the Mission "merely repatriated police monitors accused in involvement in trafficking, acting under the legal fiction that countries will prosecute and reprimand their own nationals."

Thus far, Human Rights Watch had not confirmed a single case where the home country either investigated or prosecuted the offenders. As well, some U.N. monitors allege that when they attempted to alert their superiors to evidence of trafficking or involvement of fellow monitors, they faced retaliation.

The report also notes that investigations were stalled when high-level Mission officials failed to assign investigators to trafficking cases or ordered investigators "not to dig too deep" into allegations.

Cautioning that statistics "remain woefully unreliable", Non Governmental Organizations' experts still estimate that about 2,000 women and girls from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are enslaved in Bosnian brothels while the U.N. Mission estimates that 227 Bosnian nightclubs and bars are involved in trafficking women and girls.