A new civil society-led campaign is targeting a pervasive culture that knows few legal limits — the near total immunity provided to U.N. peacekeepers who commit sexual exploitation and abuse against civilians they are charged with protecting.
CodeBlue launched Wednesday, May 13, in New York City in a bid to hold nonmilitary U.N. peacekeeper personnel legally accountable. This group accounted for the majority of U.N. mission sexual perpetrators in 2014, according to the campaign coalition.
The campaign, announced at the Ford Foundation headquarters in New York, also calls for an independent, member-state commission to evaluate how the U.N. system is handling the problem of sexual misconduct in post-conflict and conflict nations.