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Editor's note
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Marie* was 14 years old and enrolled in a Christian school when she met and became involved with Miguel, a Brazilian soldier working in Haiti as a UN peacekeeper. When she told him that she was pregnant with his baby, Miguel said he would help her with the child. But instead, he returned to Brazil. Marie wrote to him on Facebook but he never responded.
According to new research by Sabine Lee and Susan Bartles, Marie’s experience is far from unique. In the summer of 2017, their study team interviewed about 2,500 Haitians about the experiences of local women and girls living in communities that host peace support operations. Of those, 265 told stories that featured children fathered by UN personnel. That 10% of those interviewed mentioned such children highlights just how common such stories
really are.
The narratives reveal how girls as young as 11 were sexually abused and impregnated by peacekeepers and then, as one man put it, “left in misery” to raise their children alone, often because the fathers are repatriated once the pregnancy becomes known. Mothers such as Marie are then left to raise the children in settings of extreme poverty and disadvantage, with most receiving no assistance.
In China, the introduction of a social credit system is seen as a controversial idea in the west, but what do Chinese citizens think? Xinyuan Wang went to find out. And advanced chemical analysis has been used to uncover breastfeeding secrets from ancient Syria and Lebanon.
*not her real name
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Paul Keaveny
Commissioning Editor
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Top stories
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Arindambanerjee/Shutterstock.com
Sabine Lee, University of Birmingham; Susan Bartels, Queen's University, Ontario
The voices of young victims in Haiti can now be heard for the first time thanks to a groundbreaking new research project.
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Commuters on the Shanghai Metro all on their smartphones in March, 2019.
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A Middle Bronze Age child from the Lebanese site of Sidon buried in a large jar. Smaller ceramics were placed with the dead as funerary objects.
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