Last year, one of the many stories of U.N. scandal involved peacekeepers committing terrible acts of sex abuse on children in the Congo.

This year, one of the many stories of U.N. scandal involves peacekeepers committing terrible acts of sex abuse on children in the Congo.

And no, this is not a recording.

Reuters reported last week: "The United Nations is investigating a suspected child prostitution ring involving its peacekeepers and government soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the U.N. mission said on Thursday."

After reports emerged last year that U.N. peacekeepers were trading food for sex with girls as young as 10 or 11, the world body promised to clean up its act. So, naturally, it drafted a new policy – a code of conduct for its peacekeepers. It claimed it was investigating. It sent one French peacekeeper home. (No word on whether he was allowed to eat his supper.)

And now, in the same place, within the same peacekeeping mission, the same charges have emerged yet again. U.N. peacekeepers taking advantage of their positions of power to sexually exploit the very people they are supposed to be protecting.

Don't think for a second that peacekeeper sexual abuse is limited to the Congo. The Associated Press reports that, "Cases of sexual abuse have also been reported in other peacekeeping missions from Bosnia and Kosovo to Cambodia, East Timor and West Africa."

And a U.N. official tells the news service that the U.N.'s bureaucrats are "try[ing] to change the previous culture of indifference to sexual exploitation."

Uh huh. How's that going?

Here's the bigger problem: how can any U.N. peacekeeping mission be trusted to protect the local population and prevent conflict when the peacekeepers can't be relied on to behave with even a basic level of morality?

Consistent depravity seems to be the order of every day, on every mission.

That calls into question every deployment and every decision to turn to the U.N. to keep the peace, even in Lebanon, perhaps.

And the U.N. slide into irrelevance continues.