logo
episode-header-image
Jun 2020
9m 13s

Sex trafficking and peacekeepers

Bbc World Service
About this episode

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)

Up next
Today
John Lennon's final headline concerts
In 1972, after leaving The Beatles, John Lennon and Yoko Ono performed in the United States at the One to One benefit concerts at Madison Square Garden, New York. They were helping to raise money for children with disabilities from Willowbrook State School, after a television exp ... Show More
9m 3s
Yesterday
The making of the Third Man: A film noir classic
In 1948, filming began on a post-war thriller that would become one of the greatest British movies of all time.Directed by Sir Carol Reed, the film captured the atmosphere of a divided, ruined Vienna. But much of its lasting power lies with Orson Welles, whose magnetic, menacing ... Show More
9 m
Aug 27
Washington DC’s Mount Pleasant riot
In May 1991, a female police officer shot and wounded a young immigrant from El Salvador in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood in Washington DC in the United States. It sparked several days of disturbances in the largely Hispanic area, as the population vented its frustrations at y ... Show More
9m 29s
Recommended Episodes
Jun 2020
Sex trafficking and peacekeepers
How whistle-blowers implicated UN peacekeepers and international police in the forced prostitution and trafficking of Eastern European women into Bosnia in the late 1990s. Plus, how Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross changed the way we think about death and dying when she d ... Show More
49m 55s
Apr 2021
69/ The Entrenched “Manliness” of Ethnic Power-sharing Peace Agreements (with Aida A. Hozić)
This is a conversation with Aida A. Hozić.  She is an Associate Professor of International Relations and Associate  Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of  Florida, United States. Her research is situated at the intersection of  political economy, cultu ... Show More
1h 25m
Jan 2022
Women building peace: Bosnia-Herzegovina
A woman born after her mother was raped during the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s says the struggle for reparation and reconciliation continues 25 years later. Suzanne Kianpour discusses what we can learn from past atrocities to help resolve the current political crisis, with Osca ... Show More
23m 54s
Mar 2023
International Women's Day
Max Pearson presents a compilation of stories celebrating women who made history including a ground-breaking, African American science fiction writer and the first presidential hopeful in Mexico. Plus the UN's first ever all-female peacekeeping unit, a woman who helped bring peac ... Show More
51m 10s
Aug 2023
Presidential diamonds and Tupperware parties
Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History stories from the BBC World Service. Journalist Claude Angeli discovered French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing received diamonds from a depraved African emperor, which contributed to him losing the presidential e ... Show More
50m 48s
Oct 2019
Baroness Arminka Helić
Baroness Arminka Helić is credited with persuading William Hague, the former foreign secretary, and the actor and director Angelina Jolie to launch the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI) to campaign against rape as a weapon of war.Born in Bosnia-Herzegovina, ... Show More
37m 43s
Sep 2021
Build Trust and Build a Future
“We know that whenever you have these sort of atrocity crimes that happened here [Bosnia and Herzegovina], they're often preceded by hate. They're often preceded by individuals and responsibility, whether they're political leaders, whether they're religious leaders, whether they' ... Show More
36m 56s
Apr 2022
'A horror story'
The UN Human Rights Office has today described the war in Ukraine as a ‘horror story of violations against civilians’, in which respect for international law has been ‘tossed aside’. Matilda Bogner, who runs the UN's Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, tells us about the ... Show More
30m 53s
Nov 2019
'Jane' - the underground abortion service
The feminist network that performed illegal abortions in the 1960s in Chicago, the Algerian nationals who fought alongside the French in Algeria’s war of independence and when Margaret Thatcher first expressed anti- Europe sentiment. Plus the Paris hotel that hosted Holocaust sur ... Show More
48m 44s
Mar 2011
Uganda
Anna Cavell investigates the human trafficking of Ugandan women to Iraq. They were lured there by promises of well-paid jobs - but instead found themselves effectively in slavery, beaten and in some cases raped. She hears the story of how a Ugandan security contractor and an Amer ... Show More
28m 12s