Central African Republic Archives - Kit O'Connell: Approximately 8,000 Words

A whistleblower who alerted authorities to the alleged rape of children by U.N. peacekeepers resigned after top U.N. officials investigated him instead of investigating the accusations he called attention to.

When U.N. officials failed to act on a confidential report which accuses French troops of sexually abusing refugee children in the Central African Republic, Anders Kompass, field operations director at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, leaked the report to the French government in 2014.
According to a June 7 report from IRIN, a news site focused on global humanitarian emergencies, “The alleged abuse involved hungry children – as young as eight – in the M’Poko camp for displaced people, coerced into sex in return for food or a little money.”

Now Kompass is calling it quits. He told Obi Anyadike, IRIN’s editor-at-large, that the situation has made it “impossible for me to continue working there.”

When the Seleka, a group of mostly Muslim rebels, led a successful coup in the Central African Republic in March 2013, one of the world’s poorest countries was plunged into turmoil as Christian militias targeted the nation’s minority Muslim population in what amounts to genocide.

The Seleka were ousted from power in January 2014, and the country has since been embroiled in a civil war between the Seleka and an armed coalition called the Anti-Balaka.

While the entire civilian population has suffered enormously throughout the conflicts in the Central African Republic, perhaps no group has suffered more than the country’s Muslim minority.