AP investigation: 5 things to know about UN sex abuse

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Here are key findings on AP’s investigation into in the U.N.’s peacekeeping crisis:

1. The AP reviewed 12 years of UN data on sexual misconduct and exploitation, and found an estimated 2,000 allegations against peacekeepers and personnel – signaling the crisis is much larger than previously known.

2. More than 300 of the allegations involved children, AP found, but only a fraction of the alleged perpetrators served jail time.

In this Aug. 11, 2016 photo, Martine Gestime 32, holds up a picture of her son, Ashford, during an interview in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Gestime said she was raped by a Brazilian peacekeeper in 2008 and became pregnant with Ashford. They live in a cramped two-room dwelling she shares with six other people in a Port-au-Prince slum. Unable to afford school for him, she relies on him to beg for food. "He tells me all the time that he doesn't have a father or mother who can look after him." (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

In this Aug. 11, 2016 photo, Martine Gestime 32, holds up a picture of her son, Ashford, during an interview in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Gestime said she was raped by a Brazilian peacekeeper in 2008 and became pregnant with Ashford. They live in a cramped two-room dwelling she shares with six other people in a Port-au-Prince slum. Unable to afford school for him, she relies on him to beg for food. “He tells me all the time that he doesn’t have a father or mother who can look after him.” (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

3. A U.N. investigation report from 2007 obtained by AP shows that 134 Sri Lankan peacekeepers had sex with at least nine Haitian children. No one was jailed, and Sri Lanka kept participating in U.N. missions in Haiti and elsewhere.

4. Sri Lanka refuses to specify what happened to 23 soldiers disciplined for the child sex ring in Haiti and why so few were punished.

5. In the latest U.N. annual report, Sri Lanka is cited for its “best practices” involving a paternity payment made recently to a Haitian woman. It took Sri Lanka nearly a decade to make the payment.

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