Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations
russiaun.ru

We would like to thank Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for his briefing on issues of discipline and behaviour in peacekeeping operations.

 We attach great importance to the work on the problem of the commission of violations, including sexual abuse by members of United Nations peacekeeping contingents, as well as United Nations staff members. We believe that the United Nations and its Member States must take all possible measures to prevent and fully put an end to such actions.

No less disturbing is the information regarding the flagrant cases of sexual exploitation and abuse committed by foreign non-United Nations troops deployed in conflict regions with the consent of the Security Council. Those contingents, like the Blue Helmets, should bring peace and security to those States. We categorically reject the provision of any privileges to those forces over the staff of United Nations missions. There must be a single set of standards for all in combating that evil.

 Problems related to discipline in United Nations operations on the ground are not new. For many years, it has been discussed in the General Assembly in the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations and in the Fifth and Sixth Committees. Preventive and proactive measures are also included in resolutions regularly adopted by the General Assembly, under the heading of “Criminal accountability of United Nations officials and experts on missions”. Very often, with active participation by the General Assembly, the practice of preliminary training and induction courses for staff has been introduced, which is implemented by States together with peacekeeping operations and special political missions. Those measures are already yielding tangible results.

We believe that the involvement of all Member States in the process of establishing measures will determine the effectiveness of their implementation in practice. The key role lies with the troop-contributing countries of United Nations peacekeeping operations, which possess comprehensive information on the reasons we are unable to reduce and eliminate those shameful statistics.

Although we continue to believe that issues of peacekeeping discipline are not related to the maintenance of international peace and security, the Russian delegation showed great understanding from the very beginning for the United States initiative to strengthen the message of the unacceptability of sexual abuse by United Nations contingents under the aegis of the Security Council. At the same time, the draft resolution that has been circulated is far from ideal. It proposes a selective approach by excluding from the proposed measures both United Nations civilian personnel and non-United Nations personnel.

At the same time, as a result of ongoing negotiations in the Special Committee on Peacekeeping on that very topic, it would simply be wrong to set the Council against the General Assembly. While in no way do we minimize the seriousness of the sexual exploitation and abuse that we are discussing today, we would like to note that the collective responsibility for such actions proposed by the Secretary-General and a number of States raises questions. From our point of view, the focus should be on efforts made in good faith to find specific perpetrators, determine their guilt and have them stand trial.

A separate important task is taking steps to prevent such crimes and ensuring appropriate training and vetting of military and civilian personnel deployed in peacekeeping operations. The main burden there in cases related to troops and police is borne by troopcontributing countries. In the case of civilian personnel, the responsibility lies with the Secretariat. In that regard, we see no grounds for mentorship of Member States by the Secretariat. Among its ranks, there can also be people who are equally guilty.

At the same time, unfortunately, there remains the question of what to do with foreign contingents that have Security Council mandates to conduct operations to facilitate the resolution of conflict situations with the expectation that the operations will be carried out in good faith. We believe that cases of sexual exploitation and abuse by such forces should be thoroughly investigated by contributing countries and those found guilty must be brought to justice. There can be no impunity here. Otherwise, the Security Council will sooner or later have to consider the issue of withdrawing such authority from them.