On UN Peacekeeping & Rapes, Inner City Press Asks Ladsous, He Denies 2-Tier, No Update on Central African Republic Rapes

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 2 -- After a screening of a film about UN Peacekeeping, “Last Station Before Hell,” which portrayed missions in Lebanon, DR Congo and Central African Republic, Inner City Press on December 2 asked UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous two questions.

 The first question was why French and other European troops serve alongside but not with UN peacekeepers, in Mali (including Germans and Slovakians now replacing French), Cote d'Ivoire and CAR. The second was for an update on the rape allegations against French and UN peacekeepers in CAR. Video here and embedded below.

  Ladsous, who has repeatedly outright refused to answer Inner City Press questions in the UN, did respond to the first question, denying there is a two-tier system and describing what some view as a vestige of colonialism: he listed the UK having a special interest in Sierra Leon, like France has in Mali, and a desire to serve under its own command.

Ladsous pointedly did NOT answer the request for any update on the sexual abuse allegations against Sangaris and MINUSCA, something pointed out afterward by a number of those in attendance at the International Peace Institute.

  One also noted this: while Ladsous trumpeted a number of female SRSGs in UN Peacekeeping, only that day one of them, Ellen Loj, was confined to speaking behind closed doors after Ladsous' public speech, and then followed his pattern of no comments to the media afterward, a come-down from her predecessor Hilde Johnson and even her own previous appearances. (Johnson, sources say, pursued the Somalia SRSG post that was given to Michael Keating.)

  One of Ladsous two fellow panelists at IPI, Lise Morjé Howard, an Associate Professor of Government, Georgetown University, answered Inner City Press that the French troops are not really peacekeepers but more akin to counter-insurgency forces.

Ladsous called France “the country I know best.” He is listed in UN Dispute Tribunal documents as having tried to fire, then to retaliate against, the whistleblower who revealed the allegations of child rape by French soldiers in CAR.

There's talk, even about the P5, of Ladsous being a liability who shouldn't remain even during Ban Ki-moon's remaining time. His non-answer on sexual abuse on December 2 is particularly noteworthy given his Septembr 11 on-camera linking of the CAR rapes to “R&R,” video here. We'll continue on this.