United Nations peacekeepers fathered and abandoned thousands of children in one of the world’s poorest and most war-torn countries, research has found.
Soldiers and police operating under the UN mandate in the Democratic Republic of Congo abused children, raped young women and traded food for “survival sex”.
Researchers in the east of the country, working under a team led by the University of Birmingham, interviewed a girl who was trafficked by her family and impregnated by soldiers when she was aged ten.
They spoke to peacekeepers’ children aged between six and 19 who said they and their mothers had been left in poverty and facing discrimination when their fathers left the country and provided no ongoing support. Researchers also interviewed 60 women who had borne
