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Witness History

Sex trafficking and peacekeepers

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2020

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the late 1990s, whistle-blowers implicated UN peacekeepers and international police in the forced prostitution and trafficking of Eastern European women into Bosnia, which was just emerging from a bitter civil war. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to one of those who sounded the alarm, British human rights lawyer, Madeleine Rees, who was then working for the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Bosnia.

Picture: the United Nations Peacekeeping Force patrols the Bosnian capital Sarajevo in March 1996 (Credit: Roger Lemoyne/Liaison/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0

Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

0:04.7

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

0:08.5

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

0:18.0

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

0:24.6

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

0:29.7

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC

0:35.4

Sounds.

0:36.4

Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast here on the BBC World Service

0:47.4

first-hand accounts of events that have changed our world. I'm Louis Adaggo

0:52.0

and today I'm taking you back to a dark chapter in the history of

0:55.1

international peacekeeping. In the late 1990s whistleblowers implicated United Nations

1:00.9

peacekeepers and international police in the forced prostitution

1:04.8

and trafficking of Eastern European women into Bosnia which was just emerging

1:09.4

from a bitter civil war.

1:12.4

So now we're going into the club.

1:15.0

The place is full upstairs.

1:19.0

She was there in the other room for sure.

1:21.0

Yes, there's a girl half naked on a bed.

1:24.0

Her underwear is over there in this room.

1:26.0

Another couple on a bed, girl.

1:28.0

These women were duped, conned kidnapped in different ways, horrifically violated and brutalized,

1:39.0

and then put in these places where they would be guarded. And you know horrifically some of

...

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