Power, Consent and Peacekeeping Economies

Introduction The United Nations’ (UN’s) zero- tolerance policy (ZTP) against sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) targets three broad types of sexual interaction or relationships involving peacekeepers: sex with minors under the age of 18 (section 3.2(b)); transactional sex, defined in the policy as the ‘exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex, including sexual favours or other forms of humiliating, degrading or exploitative behaviour’ as well as ‘any exchange of assistance that is due to beneficiaries of assistance’ (section 3.2(c)); and non- transactional sexual relationships between UN staff and ‘beneficiaries of assistance’ (section 3.2(d)). The policy invokes a blanket prohibition on both sex with minors and transactional sex; sexual relationships with beneficiaries of assistance are not banned, but instead ‘strongly discouraged’ on the grounds that ‘they are based on inherently unequal power dynamics’ and ‘undermine the credibility and integrity of the work of the United Nations’ (United Nations Secretary- General, 2003: 2). Enforcement of the policy is largely dependent on reporting by the victim/ accuser or people in their circle, or by the peacekeepers’ colleagues, acquaintances, or witnesses to the act or relationship. The breadth of the policy, its lack of precision and the essentially arbitrary nature of its enforcement have come under scrutiny almost since the moment of its passage. Critiques have focused on both the difficulties of enforcing the ZTP and the assumptions underpinning it (Jennings, 2008, 2010; Otto, 2009; Simić, 2012; Henry, 2013; McGill, 2014; Westendorf, 2023a, 2023b). This chapter is in the latter tradition. It problematizes how the ZTP represents the notion of consent by both peacekeepers and beneficiaries of assistance. I argue that the ZTP writes into regulation narrow understandings of sexual intimacy against puritanical and contested conditions for consent, in contexts characterized by complex power relations between interveners and residents. The ZTP places power in sexual interactions and relationships always in the person of the (presumed male) peacekeeper. In terms of ‘strongly discouraged’ sexual relationships, the ZTP implies both that the peacekeeper will be the most (economically) powerful partner and that economic power determines whether consent is genuine or even possible.

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.