Some UN peacekeepers take the words “UN Aid” too literally (or should that be UN AIDS?)
Although U.N. peacekeepers were dispatched to the Congo to keep order and improve the lives of Congolese, some leave behind disease and heartbreak.Juliette, a Congolese woman who had a relationship with a peacekeeper, is the mother of one of an estimated hundreds of mixed-race children abandoned by U.N. workers at the end of their 6-month tours of duty, despite an official policy of no contact between U.N. peacekeepers and local women.“There is no help from the U.N.,” Juliette said. “They just make women pregnant and leave. They never take care of their kids.”The single mothers, however, are more fortunate than 17-year-old Bijou, who said she contracted the AIDS virus from a peacekeeper and has since passed it on to her husband and child.
I will say it once, and, no doubt, I will say it again: what is the UN good for?
