Records suggest that the United Nations spent half a billion dollars on contracts with a Russian aviation company after discovering one of its helicopter crews working in the Democratic Republic of Congo drugged and raped a teenage girl.
Internal UN documents, leaked to the Guardian, reveal how the UN’s internal complaints unit received evidence that the woman was abused with lit cigarettes and photographed lying on the ground.
A senior UN official, commenting on the findings, stressed that the sexual violence incidents were not isolated and that “the problems of sexual exploitation were wider.”
Last month, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon said the UN had a “zero-tolerance” policy toward sexual exploitation.