Humanitarian aid workers trade food for sex with 6 year olds

Excerpts from CNN.

Humanitarian aid workers and United Nation peacekeepers are sexually abusing small children in war-ravished and food-poor countries, a leading European charity has said.


Children as young as 6 are among those who have been forced to have sex with aid workers and peacekeepers in return for food and money, Save the Children UK said in a report released Tuesday.

After interviewing hundreds of children, the charity says it found instances of rape, child prostitution, pornography, indecent sexual assault and trafficking of children for sex. "It is hard to imagine a more grotesque abuse of authority or flagrant violation of children's rights," Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children UK, said.

In the report, "No One To Turn To" a 15-year-old girl from Haiti told researchers: "My friends and I were walking by the National Palace one evening when we encountered a couple of humanitarian men. The men called us over and showed us their penises. "They offered us 100 Haitian gourdes ($2.80) and some chocolate if we would suck them. I said, 'No,' but some of the girls did it and got the money."

Save the Children says almost as shocking as the abuse itself, is the "chronic under-reporting" of the abuses. It believes that thousands more children around the world could be suffering in silence. According to the charity, children told researchers they were too frightened to report the abuse, fearful that the abuser would come back to hurt them and that they would stop receiving aid from agencies, or even be punished by their family or community. "People don't report it because they are worried that the agency will stop working here, and we need them," a teenage boy in southern Sudan told Save the Children.