Agnès was one of the 120,000 people who became homeless after the 2002 Nyiragongo volcano eruption in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The eruption swallowed 15 percent of the city and killed more than 100 people.

“I lost everything and became a disaster victim,” Agnès said, recalling the incident that led to her live in a United Nations peacekeeping camp (Monusco), where she was impregnated by a peacekeeper. (Her real name is being withheld for privacy reasons.)

She is now one of the 747 women who have filed a paternity claim against UN peace operation officers deployed to various crisis zones through Security Council mandates.

A newly created dashboard of the UN Department of Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance that records all paternity claims showed that more cases were reported in 2023 than any other year since 2006. Most of the cases recorded are in Africa, with South Africa accounting for 15 percent of the global percentage. The department is led by Catherine Pollard, an undersecretary-general.

The UN has led attempts to collect DNA samples from soldiers being deployed to join peacekeeping missions. DNA samples were collected in Congo and South Africa in 2017. Pollard said creating a DNA database of peacekeepers gets the UN in front of the situation but bemoans the lack of cooperation from member states. A robust DNA pool would enable prompt resolution of paternity claims, she added. However, collecting DNA is only the first step in solving the problem, and the exercise has been limited to only a few countries.

The dashboard has revealed other bottlenecks in resolving claims even when DNA samples have been collected. In South Africa, where DNA samples have been gathered in the past, no single case has been settled despite the high number of claims filed against peacekeeping personnel from the country. In Cameroon, with the second-largest claim, only two cases have been resolved. That is, the peacekeeper fathers have either taken legal responsibility for the children or paid some form of child support. Of the 747 cases, only 29 cases have been solved.

The UN has a no-fraternizing policy prohibiting its personnel from having intimate relationships with vulnerable groups. Nevertheless, Pollard’s department found that some of the women were minors when they were impregnated. There are also instances where the women used sex as payment for food or shelter.

Darren Olivier, a director of the African Defense Review, which provides conflict analysis, said South Africa’s military code of conduct is silent on fraternizing with locals when contributed personnel are on foreign missions. The dashboard revealed that 97 percent of all paternity claims are against soldiers and police officers — only 3 percent of the claims are made against other UN staff.

Pollard blamed the low number of resolved cases on member states, who are ultimately responsible for the conduct of their soldiers, she said. Indeed, countries are largely unresponsive to addressing the paternity issue, particularly the matter of holding the fathers accountable. The goal of the UN is to help the children of peacekeepers connect with their fathers, but this process, she said, can happen only through the national government of the accused personnel.

“Contingent members or police contributors ultimately are under the authority of their national governments,” Pollard told PassBlue during an interview in her office at the UN on Dec. 10. “We as a secretariat can provide all the information to the member states, but it is the member states themselves who have to take this action, and we want them to be able to take action.”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has asked member states to create a national agency to manage the resolution of claims. Countries have the responsibility to seek justice for victims by putting perpetrators through their legal systems for appropriate actions and sanctions.

“We count on member states to take actions where their nationals are involved by moving faster to resolve paternity claims, by holding perpetrators to account, and by working with the United Nations to urgently find solutions to resolving claims quickly,” Guterres said in a video message.

Some paternity cases have remained open for more than a decade. Guterres said the children born to peacekeepers who often leave the country of assignment before the mothers carry the pregnancy to term face poverty, stigma and insecurity.

Alexandra Filippova, a senior staff attorney at the Institute for Justice and Democracy (IJD) in Haiti, passed the buck back to the UN, saying it could do more for the women and their children who are thrust into hardship by peacekeepers working under its flag. Filippova said that her organization won a court judgment for a Haitian woman who had a child fathered by a Uruguayan peacekeeper. It was the first such case in a Haitian court. It ordered the father to pay $4,000 in monthly child support to the mother.

Three years on, the instability in Haiti has stalled progress on other cases that have been filed and the 2021 judgment by Filippova’s organization has not been implemented. The language barrier has made communication difficult with the Uruguayan authorities, but perhaps the most daunting challenge is getting Uruguay to enforce the judgment. IJD worked with a Uruguayan legal advocacy and women’s rights group to explore the possibility of getting the Haitian court judgment enforced but failed.

“There needs to be a more robust system that centers victims as rights holders and prioritizes ensuring that they get the support that they need,” Filippova said. “It surely cannot be the mother who is already dealing with having a child in an inherently difficult situation, because the fact that peacekeepers were deployed means that this is an unstable place with lack of resources and institutions that aren’t functioning effectively.”

Pollard said the mothers whose cases are settled receive assistance to care for their children and to start a business through the UN Trust Fund in Support of Victims of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. Agnès started her restaurant with a $100 stipend she received from the UN. But both Filippova and Pollard agree that is hardly enough.

“The assistance is provided in the guise of charity,” Filippova said. “It is quite limited, and it doesn’t treat those women as rights holders or as individuals who have a right to parental contributions and support.”

Agnès’s child is now 20 years old and works at her mother’s restaurant in the Congo. She said the emotional void left by her absent father causes her pain. “I believe my father is still alive, but I cannot say it,” she said in testimony shared by the compliance department with PassBlue. “The lack of this affection causes me pain.”

Filippova said the solution for the mothers and their children is for the UN to take direct responsibility for its peacekeepers and use its global reach to get indemnifications from the fathers who are evading accountability.

“But instead, the UN makes small, inadequate payments and pretends its paternalistic handouts are sufficient to meet its own stated value of accountability. And they are not. And they are certainly not justice,” she said.

Pollard, who has been with the UN since 1989 and is from Guyana, spoke to PassBlue about the challenges of reuniting the children with their fathers and the hurdles against getting justice for the mothers. This interview was conducted on Dec 10. It has been edited and condensed for clarity, brevity and flow. — DAMILOLA BANJO

PassBlue: Why is this new UN paternity-claims dashboard important?

Pollard: The dashboard is really about us continuing to increase transparency about our work in peacekeeping operations, and we launched several years ago the conduct in field missions website, which is one of the important ways we communicate with the public about allegations around sexual exploitation and abuse. Over the years, we had this information available, but it was not easily accessible or understandable. So for us, while it is an unfortunate circumstance, it is one of the challenges that we are addressing in peacekeeping, and we think that it is important that the public, including the member states who provide us with troops and police, also understand that this is one outcome of acting on sexual exploitation and abuse. It’s not intended to be finger-pointing at member states.

PassBlue: What are the challenges you face with the member states regarding paternity claims?

Pollard: While [troops] are serving under the command and control of mission leadership, they’re subject to the national legislation of their countries, so only member states can take the actions of accountability that are necessary. It is true that, depending on the country, their own national legislation may not fully address this issue, and that is one of the challenges that could exist.

PassBlue: Are member states aware of these issues about paternity? What are the responses you get from them?

Pollard: Yes, they are aware, because we communicate with them when the allegations are proven, victims come forward and the allegations are substantiated through our processes. Part of the process is a national joint investigation with our OIOS [Office of Internal Oversight Services]. We communicate with member states, we share all the information with them, and we continue to follow up with them. It is true that there is turnover in governments.

PassBlue: What responses do you get from member states about the problems reflected in the dashboard and other initiatives related to peacekeepers’ sexual abuse and exploitation?

Pollard: We get verbal indications that they take note of it and that they’re working on it. But in some instances, we have had concrete steps where some national authorities have reached out to us to collaborate, for instance, on paternity testing through DNA testing. The UN secretariat can do DNA testing, but it has to be requested by the member states. What we would like to see is member states themselves implement DNA testing as part of predeployment, so that if these situations occur, then it will be easier to establish paternity. So we offer this information to the member states. Some of them have come forward and said, yes, they want to work with us. Others, unfortunately, there is silence.

PassBlue: What’s the most important message to member states about paternity claims?

Pollard: I know it sounds like the United Nations is almost powerless. That’s why we do not have the authority to take all the actions needed to address and resolve these issues. We need to work in partnership with the member states. Now, the message to the troops is about prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse. It tarnishes the work of the thousands of men and women peacekeepers, some of whom have paid the ultimate price in conflict settings. And we know that peacekeeping is one of the most important tools that the UN deploys in peace and security and has been successful over many decades. Through the actions of a few it can cast a very negative shadow on the work of thousands. That is not right. So the message is that we should really uphold the standards of conduct, the values of the United Nations, refrain from these actions, which really are inconsistent with everything that the United Nations stands for.

PassBlue: What is the overall condition of the mothers?

Pollard: The mothers are victims, and now that we have implemented the strategy on prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse, the rights of victims are at the center of the strategy. What we do within the missions is provide support to the victims. In the large missions, we have a senior victims rights officer, and they coordinate the support to the victims in terms of psychosocial support, medical support, and we look into the possibility of legal advisory services. We would like to offer support in a longer-term timeframe, and we look at various ways that we can help these women to acquire skills to eventually be self-sustaining and look after themselves and their children.

Damilola Banjo

Damilola Banjo is an award-winning staff reporter for PassBlue who has covered a wide range of topics, from Africa-centered stories to gender equality to UN peacekeeping and US-UN relations. She also oversees all video production for PassBlue. She was a Dag Hammarskjold fellow in 2023 and a Pulitzer Center postgraduate fellow in 2021. She was part of the BBC Africa team that produced the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Sex for Grades.” In addition, she worked for WFAE, an NPR affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. Banjo has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.