U.N. peace­keep­ers en­gaged in "trans­ac­tion­al sex" with hun­dreds of Hait­ian women who said they need­ed to do so to ob­tain things like food and med­ica­tion.

This is among the find­ings of a new U.N. re­port on the per­sis­tent prob­lem of sex­u­al abuse by its peace­keep­ing mis­sions.

Those mis­sions have about 125,000 peo­ple in some of the world's most trou­bled ar­eas, in­clud­ing Haiti, the poor­est coun­try in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. The re­port sug­gests that sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion re­mains sig­nif­i­cant­ly un­der­re­port­ed in such mis­sions.

A decade ago, a ground­break­ing U.N. re­port first tack­led the is­sue prob­lem of sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion. But the new re­port re­veals that ma­jor chal­lenges re­main.

Among its find­ings: About a third of al­leged sex­u­al abuse in­volves mi­nors un­der 18. And wide­spread con­fu­sion re­mains on the ground about con­sen­su­al sex and ex­ploita­tion.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors in­ter­viewed 231 peo­ple in Haiti who said they'd had trans­ac­tion­al sex­u­al re­la­tion­ships with U.N. peace­keep­ers.

"For rur­al women, hunger, lack of shel­ter, ba­by care items, med­ica­tion and house­hold items were fre­quent­ly cit­ed as the 'trig­ger­ing need,'" the re­port says. Ur­ban and sub­ur­ban women re­ceived "church shoes,' cell phones, lap­tops and per­fume, as well as mon­ey," the re­port says.

"In cas­es of non-pay­ment, some women with­held the badges of peace­keep­ers and threat­ened to re­veal their in­fi­deli­ty via so­cial me­dia."

It was not clear how many peace­keep­ers were in­volved.

For all of last year, the to­tal num­ber of al­le­ga­tions of sex­u­al abuse and ex­ploita­tion against mem­bers of all U.N. peace­keep­ing mis­sions was 51, down from 66 the year be­fore, ac­cord­ing to the sec­re­tary-gen­er­al's lat­est an­nu­al re­port on the is­sue.

The draft re­port doesn't say over what time frame the "trans­ac­tion­al sex" in Haiti oc­curred. The peace­keep­ing mis­sion there was first au­tho­rized in 2004. It is one of four peace­keep­ing mis­sions that have ac­count­ed for the most al­le­ga­tions of sex­u­al abuse in re­cent years, along with those in Con­go, Liberia and South Su­dan.

The U.N. pro­hibits "ex­change of mon­ey, em­ploy­ment, goods or ser­vices for sex," and it strong­ly dis­cour­ages sex­u­al re­la­tion­ships be­tween U.N. staff and peo­ple who re­ceive their as­sis­tance, say­ing they are "based on in­her­ent­ly un­equal pow­er dy­nam­ics" and un­der­mine the world body's cred­i­bil­i­ty.