Seminar Series: Abstract

1:00
April 06 2009
Seminar Room C

'Zero tolerance' with exceptions?: The UN and NGO response to peacekeeping
Gabrielle Simm

PhD candidate, RegNet

In 2002 humanitarian aid workers and UN personnel in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea were implicated in what became known as the West African 'aid for sex' scandal. UN and aid workers in refugee camps were alleged to be demanding sex with refugees in exchange for food rations, housing materials, medicine and other humanitarian items. In response, the UN and NGOs developed a 'zero tolerance' approach to sex between peacekeepers (including aid workers) and local people, with a couple of exceptions. Since then, further reports have emerged of peacekeeping sex in Nepal, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Cote D'Ivoire, and Sudan.

The zero tolerance approach has been welcomed by most, although there have been some critiques of its effectiveness in practice. Dianne Otto's Foucauldian critique of the zero tolerance policy argues that its productive effects are to reinstate conservative hierarchies of gender and sexuality, while ignoring the main problem which is poverty, rather than sex. In this presentation I want to build on Otto's critique, but also to extend it by exploring further some particularly problematic aspects of the zero tolerance policy, namely its position on marriage, same sex relationships, and children.