Monrovia: UN peacekeepers, aid workers and teachers are having sex with Liberian girls as young as eight in return for money, food or favours, threatening efforts to rebuild a nation wrecked by war, a report said on Monday.
Save the Children UK said an alarming number of girls were being sexually exploited by men in authority in refugee camps and in the wider community, sometimes for as little as a bottle of beer, a ride in an aid vehicle or watching a film.
"This cannot continue," Save the Children UK Chief Executive Jasmine Whitbread said. "Men who use positions of power to take advantage of vulnerable children must be reported and fired."
"More must be done to support children and their families to make a living without turning to this kind of desperation."
The 20-page document said local people reported sexual exploitation by peacekeepers in every location where a contingent of the UNMIL peacekeeping force was stationed, highlighting the continuing problem of sex abuse by UN forces.
Allegations of sexual misconduct have dogged UN operations in Liberia, Ivory Coast, Haiti and especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the world body has accused members of its biggest peacekeeping force of rape, paedophilia and giving children food or money in return for sex.
The UN force in Liberia said in a statement eight cases of sexual exploitation and abuse involving UN personnel had been reported since the start of 2006.
One of those had been substantiated and the member of staff suspended.
"We are appalled with any activity, the sexual exploitation or abuse by aid workers, be they international or Liberian. It's unacceptable behaviour," UN's humanitarian coordinator in Liberia, Jordan Ryan, told BBC radio in London from Monrovia.
Save the Children called on Liberia's new government, UN agencies and donors to set up a government-led ombudsman office to ensure cases of sexual exploitation against children are investigated and promote a policy of zero tolerance.
Countries which contribute troops to the U.N. force should also ensure soldiers who sexually exploited children are charged and those found guilty removed from the force, it said.
Man Business
Liberian society has been shattered by a 1989-2003 civil war which caused an estimated 250,000 deaths in a country of barely three million people, forcing around 1.3 million people from their homes into camps around the capital Monrovia or abroad.
Elections late last year saw Harvard-trained former World Bank economist Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf voted in as president, but her government faces a massive task to rebuild an economy and society torn apart by years of bloodshed.
The report's compilers spoke to more than 300 people in camps for displaced people and communities where people had recently returned to their pre-war localities.
"All of the respondents clearly stated that they felt that the scale of the problem affected over half of the girls in their locations," it said, adding aid workers, teachers, camp and government employees, policemen and soldiers were involved.
"The girls reportedly ranged in age from eight to 18 years, with girls of 12 years and upwards identified as being regularly involved in 'selling sex'," commonly referred to as "man business," it said.
It did not give a total number for estimated cases of sexual exploitation in Liberia.
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