Note to RTE News..

..soft-pedalling coverage of the Irish UN peacekeepers charged with "misconduct" in Eritrea: There is no such thing as an underage woman. The proper term is "girl".

Comments

[John]

Frank, I found that phrase curious too, but the Commandant denied that the "women" were "underage". But, I can't find anything more substantial about this anywhere.

I was wondering if they were "not underage" according to Eritrean or Irish or UN standards. It seems unlikely that all three will define the age of consent in the same way. I was under the impression that the women were underage, probably from earlier press reports. I was really annoyed that the interviewer didn't ask how old were the women?

[Frank McGahon]

You have still got sucked into describing them as "women". Whatever the relevant age of consent, these are teenage girls. My guess is that Eritrea's age of consent is unlikely to be higher than Ireland's.

[Abiola Lapite]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

The legal age of consent in Eritrea is actually 18, for both
sexes. This being Eritrea we're talking about, though, I doubt
the notion of "female consent" outside of marriage is even
recognized in practice.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (MingW32) - GPGshell v3.10
Comment: My Public Key is at the following URL:

iD8DBQFAqdGQOgWD1ZKzuwkRAiB7AJ9m7WFD539JH1Uf/Z8+YagwWg9RwACfYdq5
6IMB6f9Wb0JZYlMBu9lgtt8=
=h8S8
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[Brian]

Unfortunately, anywhere there are contigents of foreign troops, there is a higher occurence of sexual assault. Be it Liberia, Bosnia or Okinawa. Sigh...

[Brian]

BTW-Thanks for your comment. It was the first comment my blog has received since comments became integrated into the template.