Her Name Is Untac: UN Peacekeepers’ Forgotten Children in Cambodia

“A UN military observer from the United States (right) blowing up balloons for children in Cambodia’s Ratanakiri Province in March 1993.”

PHOTO: John Isaac/UN

“This October marks 30 years since the signing of the peace treaty that officially ended years of war and paved the way for the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). Decades on, a little-known legacy of its peacekeeping mission shows the lasting impacts of UN interventions, especially for some of Cambodia’s most vulnerable.

“UN peacekeeping forces around the world comprise a patchwork of troops and police from UN member states, deployed to conflict-torn countries to facilitate a transition to peace. Although they wear their various national uniforms, they have two insignia in common: a pale blue helmet or beret. The UN says both have become symbols of hope ever since the UN’s first peacekeeping mission in the Middle East in 1948. 

“Though recent sexual abuse and exploitation scandals involving peacekeepers in Haiti and the Central African Republic have tarnished that image, misconduct by the ‘blue helmets’ is nothing new. Neither is the phenomenon of so-called peace babies—a term coined during the 1999 to 2010 UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo to describe children born to peacekeepers and local women they were assigned to protect. But births of “peace babies” date back at least to the early 1990s. 

“UNTAC remains one of the UN’s most ambitious and complex peacekeeping interventions. In some respects, it was a resounding success: it brought 20,000 military, police and civilian personnel from over 100 countries to Cambodia, and from March 1992 to September 1993, it effectively ran the country. 

“The blue helmets had a sweeping mandate and the unprecedented task of organising the first democratic election after the Khmer Rouge genocide—no small feat in a nation still reeling from the atrocities and years of diplomatic isolation. Their other responsibilities included supervising disarmament and the ceasefire between warring factions and repatriating thousands of Cambodian refugees from Thai border camps. 

“But the mission also made history for its treatment of women and girls as allegations exposed rampant abuse, harassment and sexual exploitation by peacekeepers, including paying for the services of sex workers, which is now prohibited under UN rules.“

Read Marta Kasztelan’s full feature for New Naratif here.