Read and Watch: Troops Booted After Having Sex With Young Haitian Girls
Posted Dec. 19, 2007 – In the latest, and perhaps most debased scandal to hit the leading international peace organization, United Nations troops paid to have sex with little Haitian girls for as little as one buck.
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As a disciplinary response to the sex-for-money trade with girls as young as 13, the U.N. expelled at least 114 Sri Lankan troops its Stabilization Mission in Haiti for sexual exploitation of Haitian women and girls, Reuters reports.
''The rules are very strict and very clear. There's a zero-tolerance policy,'' he said of the code of conduct that all of the nearly 9,000 U.N. soldiers, police and civilians deployed in Haiti must uphold. "You can't have sex with anybody under 18 or with anybody in exchange for money, services, promises or food.''
Five young even went back to Sri Lanka with the troops, where they were forced into brothels or polygamous households. They have been rescued and brought home to warn others of the dangers of foreign liaisons.
For Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, this is not the first time it has been exploited by occupiers, but the cruel twist in the current affair is that the country was taken advantage of by the very people sent to protect her.
