Nearly all the nineteen women interviewed about sexual violence by United Nations Peacekeepers in the Central Africa Republic (MINUSCA) said they did not directly report the abuses to MINUSCA or knew how to make a complaint.

The women interviewed were selected by investigators based on no prior knowledge of their cases except the time period that they said they were abused, so there was no bias towards those who might not have reported.

“Victims are very afraid to talk about what they have experienced and don’t know who to talk to at MINUSCA,” said the president of a local association that supports women who have survived sexual abuse. The president asked for their name and the name of their organisation not to be used to avoid jeopardising relations with the mission.

Jeanne said she approached two peacekeepers at the entrance of a Rwandan base in Bangui straight after she said she was assaulted there last year, wanting to explain what had happened and to ask for their help. “Both of them laughed at me and one of them just nodded,” she recalled.

Jeanne said she did not know who to contact at the UN in the days that followed, and also felt afraid of approaching the mission. Instead, she said she sought help from Médecins Sans Frontières, who checked her for sexually transmitted diseases.

Although Jeanne has not reported her abuse to MINUSCA, she said she wants her story to be shared as widely as possible. “I don’t think it is normal to do this and I want to show the whole world what is going on here, what they are doing,” she said.

Mary, who worked briefly as a cleaner at a MINUSCA base in the central town of Bambari, said direct threats of violence stopped her from reporting abuse after she was raped by two Mauritanian soldiers last year.

“They threatened me with death if I spoke,” Mary told The New Humanitarian, adding that she is now ready to speak to the mission but does not know who to contact or how to make a report.

Maryame, a single mother and vegetable seller from the eastern town of Bria, said she wanted to lodge a complaint after being gang raped by Burundian soldiers last year but also did not know how to go about doing it.

Maryame said she was discouraged by not knowing the names of the perpetrators, who she said raped several other women at the same time by a river where they were bathing. She said the peacekeepers accused the women of being rebel wives as a pretext to detain them.

Sarah, 32, who lives in a displacement camp by a MINUSCA base in Bria, said feelings of shame stopped her from reporting abuse. She said she had an exploitative relationship with a Zambian peacekeeper in 2020 to support her family after her husband had to flee the town. She said she became pregnant in 2021, by which time the peacekeeper had left.

“I haven’t told anyone… and I don’t want anyone to denounce me. I’m already too ashamed,” Sarah said, explaining that people in her community who know what happened often insult her. “I’m scared and I don’t want to go to court. I have a lot of worries, I’m losing weight… and I’m constantly afraid that people will criticise me.”

Several other women from the same displacement camp shared similar accounts of exploitation and said they were also too ashamed to report the abuse. One woman said the exploitation of displaced women was rife in Bria and only stopped when Rwandan peacekeepers were deployed to protect the camp several years ago.

Although the women did not specifically mention the security situation as a barrier to reporting abuse and seeking help, aid workers and UN officials said continuous bouts of conflict over the past decade have created an environment where survivors find it difficult to come forward. This is especially the case for survivors who have been internally displaced or who live in increasingly militarised parts of the country.

In addition to the peacekeepers and bilateral Rwandan soldiers, the current government is supported by the Russian mercenary Wagner Group. It has helped the state expand its control in recent years – pushing rebel groups out of key provincial towns – yet operations have come at a major cost to human life, with Wagner and the army accused of killing civilians and committing sexual violence.

The president of the local association that supports survivors said she and other local NGO leaders that she knows are also hesitant to report abuse to MINUSCA. She said they fear confidentiality breaches and that UN funding they receive might be cut, although it was not possible to assess how credible those threats were.

The president criticised MINUSCA for not following up on allegations they said they had collected from survivors of peacekeeper abuse and shared with the mission two years ago – both in writing and in a speech given at an “experience-sharing” meeting in Bangui.

“MINUSCA said they would come back to us after reviewing my testimonies, but since then nothing has been done and I never heard from them again,” the president said. The New Humanitarian spoke to a second source who attended the same meeting and supported the president’s account.

Fernand Djapou, of the Association of Lawyers for the Promotion and Protection of Children’s Rights, said he struggled to find which section of MINUSCA to speak with when trying to support a women who said she was raped by Congolese peacekeepers several years ago. He said staff at the Bangui headquarters gave him several contacts but that people were either on leave or on mission outside the capital.

Karomschi, the president of the Muslim Organisation for Innovation in Central African Republic, said the 43 survivors he referred to MINUSCA several years ago had preliminary interviews but did not have their cases followed up on or receive any support.

Concrete walls protect the headquarters of the UN peacekeeping mission in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic. Women in the city say they have been sexually abused and exploited by blue helmets stationed there.

Karomschi said Burundian investigators did eventually come to CAR several years later to interview some of the 43 survivors. But he said they showed them small photos of soldiers that were hard to identify, especially after so much time had passed.

“After this, they announced that they would close the files if the victims were unable to identify them,” Karomschi said, explaining that he no longer reports abuse cases to the mission as a result of these experiences.

The MINUSCA spokesperson said the mission registers all cases that are brought to its attention in a database and maintains the confidentiality of survivors and third parties. They did not confirm or deny if they have a record or receiving cases from Karomschi.

The spokesperson said survivor assistance is a “priority” for the mission, and that it funds skills training and pays school fees for children born from peacekeeper fathers through its own programmatic funds and through a UN victims trust fund.

However, data provided by the spokesperson shows that out of the mission’s $1.2 billion budget for 2023-2024, it dedicated only $384,100 (0.03% of its budget) to survivor assistance as well as an additional $251,168 received from the trust fund.

For medical, legal and psychosocial support, the mission mostly refers cases to third-party organisations, including UN agencies and international and local NGOs and associations that operate in CAR.

The quality and availability of services varies according to where a survivor is living – there are fewer organisations in remote places – and depends on broader funding levels for gender-based violence programmes, which are under-resourced around the world.

Previous reporting by The New Humanitarian in CAR and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo revealed deficiencies in the assistance given to survivors by organisations. Survivors described receiving brief courses in basket weaving and short group therapy sessions.

Three organisations that receive referrals from MINUSCA for legal and medical assistance expressed frustration that a mission with such a large budget cannot provide comprehensive assistance itself.

“Many of us feel that MINUSCA should be able to take care and pay for its own victims,” said a senior official from a medical organisation that confirmed receiving referrals. They asked for anonymity to preserve good relations with MINUSCA.

A lawyer from a local association that provides legal support to women and child survivors of violence gave the same assessment, arguing that it is “unfair for an institution that has money like MINUSCA to pass on their cases to us”.

“We are already overwhelmed by cases of sexual violence within the family, or caused by the [pro-government] forces and the rebels,” said the lawyer who also asked for their identity and their organisation’s name not to be revealed.

Asked why missions refer cases instead of providing comprehensive internal support, Christian Saunders, the UN special coordinator, said it is because they do not want to “duplicate” the services already present in a country. He said missions also have budget’s “micromanaged” by member states, adding that some recent requests by the UN’s Victims’ Rights Advocate office for more resources to support survivors in CAR have been denied.

Saunders said the UN is currently undertaking an independent assessment to find a sustainable way of funding sexual abuse prevention and survivor assistance programmes. “At present the ad-hoc nature of the funding is a significant constraint to our being able to effectively combat sexual abuse and exploitation globally and to providing the level of victim assistance that is warranted and that we would wish to provide,” Saunders said.

Local NGOs and lawyers also criticised the lack of accountability for alleged perpetrators of abuse. They are under the legal jurisdiction of their national authorities, whose willingness to investigate claims and take disciplinary action varies widely.

According to the UN misconduct database, of the 239 cases reported to MINUSCA since 2015 – the allegations involve 734 peacekeepers and 709 survivors – more than half remain pending, many after several years.

Investigations can be delayed or unfinished for various reasons – survivors may withdraw consent and witnesses can be hard to track down – though in many cases in the UN database troop-contributing countries did not deploy investigation officers, despite having primary authority for investigating their peacekeepers.

Only 69 peacekeepers since 2015 have, meanwhile, been jailed by their countries, according to the database. The database does not provide sentencing details, though Saunders said the UN does collect this data and is deciding on whether to include it and therefore make it public.

He said punishments often do not fit the crime: “I know, in some incidents, there was no jail term or minimal jail term and then they were just expelled from the military, and to my mind that doesn’t constitute appropriate accountability.”

Djapou, the president of the lawyers association, said not being able to prosecute peacekeepers in CAR – and not having the funds to travel abroad – makes it hard for local lawyers to support survivors. He said he tried to help 12 women between 2019 and 2020 but felt disempowered and ended up handing over the cases to a local NGO.

Djapou described the system for investigating and punishing peacekeepers as a “load of nonsense” that “protects soldiers and rapists”. “Victims no longer come to see us because there is nothing we can do,” he said.

All of the women who spoke to The New Humanitarian said they wanted justice and assistance. Many said they need money for their children’s school fees, or to buy goods to restart businesses that collapsed while they dealt with the aftermath of the abuse.

Still, few women said they felt empowered to reach out to MINUSCA. “I don’t want to see any more peacekeepers. They have traumatised me,” said one of the women who was exploited at the displacement camp in Bria. “I don’t know where to turn.”

*The names of all survivors have been changed to protect their confidentiality and prevent reprisals.

• The New Humanitarian report