TAF PUBLISHING

For decades, the UN peacekeeping operations in poverty-stricken, war-torn host states have been littered with instances of the commission of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) of vulnerable women by peacekeepers. The governing system of the UN peacekeeping missions has been adopting successive measures to prevent peacekeepers from committing SEA with limited success. Preying on these defenseless women by peacekeepers, who are mandated to protect the civilians in host states, is a heinous crime prohibited under national and international criminal laws. This article examines the insular law governing the UN peacekeeping missions to determine how and why the offending peacekeepers escape accountability. Its 􀅫indings reveal that the UN aggressive measures are riddled with gaps and not proportional to the gravity of the crime, providing no effective deterrent. The unassailable immunity of peacekeepers in host states is a far-fetched notion when they commit such hardcore actionable crimes giving rise to the criminal responsibility of the offending peacekeepers whose prosecution is in order and imperative in the interest of crime prevention and criminal justice. Based on this 􀅫inding, the article recommends a disciplinary policy approach as a viable alternative legal avenue to end the immunity and impunity of the offending peacekeepers. The implications of such a corrective penal step would create a legal accountability regime to combat peacekeepers' predatory behavior. The novelty of this article lies in its contribution to the existing UN peacekeeping paradigm by providing a searching reappraisal of the immunity of peacekeepers to convey a message across that immunity in contemporary context no longer exonerates from criminal responsibility and hence does not protect and condone UN peacekeepers committing SEA. Implementing a 'hard' punitive penal sanction to mounting incidents of peacekeepers' SEA prescribed in this article is of paramount importance for the credible management of the UN peacekeeping missions.