Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in UN Peacekeeping Missions: Problematising Current Responses

Abstract

The concepts of agency and victimisation have been the subject of much debate within discussions of prostitution, where scholars have been divided on viewing it as exploitative work or sexual and gender-based violence.1 Much of this literature has been developed in and through feminist and gender lenses, highlighting the causes and consequences of prostitution in relation to female subjectivity. Many scholars have expanded the analysis to include other intersecting factors and identities, including the way in which racism and classism lead to precarity for black and/or working-class women.2 In addition, some scholars have argued that without a deeper consideration of the histories of colonialism and imperialism, prostitution debates can never be adequately discussed or resolved.3 Despite a rich plethora of theoretical and political writing on the subject more generally, little of the diversity of positions on the subject appears within the context of militarised places and spaces.4