‘Peacekeepers’ abuse the girls in their care, yet no one is ever punished

Last week, women working for the UN became the latest to join the #MeToo gang, and for all the eye-rolling silliness of some of #MeToo, I was pleased. The UN is in many ways a seedy closed shop. It spends zillions promoting gender equality worldwide but in practice it’s a very different story. The women of the UN described (to the Guardian) a culture of abuse (including rape) after which victims are silenced and then sidelined, often sacked.

I’m delighted they spoke out, but what puzzles me is why it stopped there. On Saturday, thousands marched around New York City to draw attention to the unjust treatment of women. So why didn’t those ladies of the UN — why didn’t all the thousands of righteous feminists on Manhattan Island — descend on the UN HQ tower in Turtle Bay to protest, not at their own treatment but at the continuing abuse of the most vulnerable girls in the world at the hands of UN ‘peacekeepers’?

It first occurred to me in 2008 — long after I should have known better — that the UN might not always be a force for purest good. I was visiting Liberia as it pulled itself back together post-war, and for a few days anyone in a blue beret seemed to me a hero. I remember the line of white Toyotas in the car park of Monrovia’s most popular seafront café. I remember the officers of the UN sitting still as spiders in the heat, watching young Liberian girls doing cartwheels. On a hill in the city where hucksters sold ‘tribal’ masks, I saw a fat man get out of a UN Land Cruiser, take a very young Liberian girl by the hand and lead her down a side street.