Interview: Unmasking foreign soldiers, aid workers who have abandoned children in Africa and Asia
Key Takeaways
Forensic DNA mapping is helping identify foreign soldiers, aid workers, and sex tourists linked to children born from abuse, decades after alleged crimes were committed.
A groundbreaking forensic DNA project is exposing foreign soldiers, aid workers, and peacekeepers accused of fathering and abandoning children across Africa and Asia. Investigators say the technology is finally bringing accountability to abuses that international institutions have ignored for decades.
Professor Andrew McLeod, lead investigator at Intersec Action and a former United Nations humanitarian lawyer, revealed to Ismail Akwei in an interview that his team has already identified 17 fathers linked to children abandoned around the British Army Training Unit in Kenya.
“We took 20 DNA samples and actually we have found more than 11 now, we’ve found 17 fathers and we’re in the process of taking them to court,” McLeod said on the Global South Conversation.
“All of the fathers we found have been either British Army soldiers or Commonwealth soldiers attached to the British Army training unit for a period of time,” he added.
Abuse goes beyond peacekeepers
The revelations are part of a wider effort using commercial DNA databases and forensic mapping to trace the biological fathers of children born from alleged sexual abuse, exploitation, and sex tourism involving foreign workers deployed in developing countries.
McLeod, who worked for both the UN and the Red Cross, said the problem stretches far beyond peacekeeping soldiers.
“It’s not just peacekeeping soldiers. It’s UN civilian staff as well. I saw how many women and children in the developing world have been abused by UN staff, NGO staff, mainly expatriates,” he said.
He added that abuses linked to international missions have persisted for decades in countries including Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Philippines, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“The food-for-sex scandals we saw in the early 2000s in Liberia and Sierra Leone saw people escaping horrible wars… going to refugee camps but not being allowed in unless they handed over sexual favours,” he said.
DNA databases
McLeod said his organisation developed a process that isolates the father’s DNA from a child born through abuse and compares it to international genealogy databases such as 23andMe and AncestryDNA.
“We can take DNA from the child that is born from abuse, isolate the father’s side of the DNA, compare that to international databases… triangulate backwards till we find the father, then knock on his door,” he explained.
Kenya and the Philippines cases reveal global pattern
He said the process has been successful in the Philippines, where investigators have reportedly identified about 35 fathers from approximately 40 DNA samples taken from children abandoned by sex tourists.
“We’ve found about 35 fathers. But it’s not just finding the fathers. You’ve got to take these fathers to courts in their home jurisdiction. Every child has the right to know who their father is. Every child has the right to the citizenship that derives from who their parents are,” he told Ismail Akwei.
Accountability from governments and the UN
Professor Andrew McLeod cited warnings from law enforcement agencies that predators increasingly target developing countries through aid and humanitarian work.
“No large organisation can say they didn’t know this happens. This has been going on for 30 or 40 years. The predators now go to the developing world,” McLeod claimed.
While he acknowledged that not every case can prove rape or coercion, he argued that DNA evidence at least establishes biological responsibility and forces alleged fathers to answer for abandoned children.
About 80 percent of the men contacted by the organisation eventually accepted responsibility, McLeod revealed.
He called for mandatory DNA collection for all male peacekeepers, aid workers, and soldiers before deployment overseas and added that perpetrators may eventually be identified decades later, even after death.
Limitations of DNA databases
He pointed to growing concerns involving foreign workers from other countries, including reports of Chinese workers allegedly abandoning children in African countries such as Malawi, Ghana, and Zimbabwe.
Although current DNA databases are more effective in tracing Western nationals because of larger participation in commercial ancestry platforms, McLeod believes future technological developments will widen the scope globally.
Watch the full interview attached to this story.
This story is written and edited by the Global South World team, you can contact us here.
