As this book neared completion in October 2023, the United Nations (UN) reported that nine South African peacekeepers serving in the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) had been detained and confined to barracks as a result of ‘fraternizing, after curfew hours, at an out- of- bounds bar known to be a place where transactional sex occurs’ (UN, 2023). The UN further noted that the men involved had been linked to ‘systematic widespread violation’ of the organization's ‘zero tolerance’ policy on sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) and, moreover, that when UN Police attended the premises to assess what had been happening, the peacekeepers involved physically assaulted and threatened them (BBC, 2023). The South African National Defence Force immediately repatriated the implicated soldiers for further investigation, but the case was just the latest in what has become a regular occurrence of sexual misconduct scandals involving peacekeepers, not only in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) but wherever they are deployed.

Although shocking, this case is sadly nothing new. It comes on the heels of news reports and investigations that have demonstrated the persistence of SEA by peacekeepers – including military, police and civilian personnel – and humanitarian aid workers against women, children and men in international missions around the world, despite over 20 years of efforts to prevent and ensure accountability for such misconduct. These behaviours are diverse and have ranged from opportunistic sexual assault and rape to planned, sadistic sexual violence, and from sex trafficking and the production of pornography to transactional sex (Westendorf and Searle, 2017). The latter ranges from consensual adult sex work (Jones and Cole, 2023) to sex-for-jobs schemes (Flummerfelt and Peyton, 2020) to ‘survival sex’, where individuals barter sex for small amounts of food or money so that they and their families can survive (Holt and Hughes, 2004; Kolbe, 2015). Research has demonstrated the remarkable longevity of the economies and cultures of abuse and exploitation that such behaviours help build in conflict- and crisis- affected societies, the long- term impacts they have for the lives of victims and survivors, and the corrosive effects they have on local and global perceptions of the legitimacy of the international organizations under whose auspices they take place (Koyama and Myrttinen, 2007; Henry and Higate, 2009; Jennings and Nikolić- Ristanović, 2009; Simić, 2012; Jennings, 2015; Kolbe, 2015; Simm, 2015; Westendorf, 2020).