UNITED NATIONS, Feb 24: ‘Significant progress’ has been made in dealing with incidences of sexual exploitation and abuse committed by United Nations peacekeepers, but much more needs to be done, a top UN official said on Thursday.

The Undersecretary General for Peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, told the Security Council that the ‘severity of the problem’, which came to the fore in 2004 with allegations against peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), had been recognised and the General Assembly had adopted a strategy to tackle it.

“The measures I have described to you are the beginning of a program of systemic and sustained change. We have made significant progress,” said Mr Guéhenno.