Our State / Ourselves: Discourses on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Police Peacekeeping

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper presents findings from interview research with Canadian police officers deployed to the UN peacekeeping missions in Haiti between 2004 and 2017. Focusing on the problem of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA), we present three discourses that emerge from this research and their reasoning about the problem of SEA. These discourses suggest that (1) other contributing countries are responsible for the problem of SEA; (2) the UN fails to sanction SEA in practice, while Canada does sanction SEA; and (3) Haitians and Haitian culture undermines efforts to reduce SEA. Using tools of critical discourse analysis, we show how discourses on SEA reinforce a mentality of self-exemption that treats sexual misconduct as a problem in which Canada and Canadians are largely innocent, while the UN, other contributing countries, and Haitians themselves, bear much more fault. We argue that these discourses reproduce a narrative of innocence and contribute to Canada’s national mythology as a do-gooder nation that is largely exempt from perpetrating SEA, despite evidence to the contrary.