Sexual misconduct in humanitarian aid and development — is it new and how do we address it?
In early February 2018, several prominent humanitarian aid and development organisations were embroiled in sexual abuse scandals. The Times of London first reported that Oxfam GB had covered up accusations of sexual exploitation and abuse, including the use of prostitutes, by 7 of its former aid workers deployed in Haiti during the response to the 2010 earthquake. Similar stories later emerged from prominent organisations including Médecins Sans Frontières /Doctors without Borders (MSF), who fired 19 staff in 2017 for sexual harassment or abuse, and Save the Children, who reported 31 cases of sexual misconduct between April 2016 and March 2017.
The scandal made international news for weeks following The Times’ initial report. However, what many in the public are learning, and what many in the aid and development sector have known for years, is that exploitation, violence, and abuse of power are rampant in humanitarian disaster response. So, is this new information on an old occurrence scandalous for its content, or for its discovery? Stated differently, are the actions by Oxfam workers in Haiti an irregularity, or has similar behaviour been lurking beneath the surface of humanitarian response for longer than we might think? And how can the aid and development sector respond?
How Long Has This Been Going On?
The public outcry that accompanied the Oxfam scandal might lead one to believe that it was the first uncovering of abuse in the humanitarian sector, but exploitation and sexual violence has been a documented phenomenon in development organisations since the mid-1990s. In 1996, the UN authored a report entitled The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children,which documented the fact that “in 6 out of 12 country studies on sexual exploitation … the arrival of peacekeeping troops has been associated with a rapid rise in child prostitution.” This proved to be true in both Bosnia and Kosovo where the arrival of NATO peacekeepers[1]correspondingly saw dramatic increases in the number of brothels and forced prostitution rackets.
Years later in 2002, UNHCR and Save the Children UK published a report containing evidence from more than 1500 individuals in West Africa (Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone specifically) detailing how international aid workers, including those from UNHCR and other UN bodies, abused refugees. The report described exchanges of sex for money and gifts and investigated the power dynamics that allowed male peacekeepers to exploit refugees using the refugees’ dependence on humanitarian goods and services to ensure their silence. As seen here, the phenomenon of sexual abuse in the humanitarian sector is not unique to a select few corrupt individuals working for Oxfam or MSF. It is an institutional epidemic that facilitates dangerous, and indeed violent power dynamics. Furthermore, the current scandal is much greater than the Haiti case might indicate.
In Syria, the UN Populations Fund (UNFPA) documented gender-based violence by men working for humanitarian agencies demanding sex for aid from women seeking humanitarian assistance in southern Syria. The UNFPA, in their report, “Voices from Syria 2018,” detailed Syrian women alleging they were coerced into providing sexual services in exchange for necessities like food. More recently, the BBC has reported that Syrian women have begun to forego aid for fear that it will be assumed in their communities that they are providing sexual favours.
The humanitarian and development sector is guilty, if not for facilitating sexual exploitation, at least for turning a blind eye to the injustices being committed by their own staff against marginalized and victimized populations. While all of this can seem to be incredibly discouraging, I would argue that we are living in a moment of opportunity when change is possible.
Does the #metoo movement change anything?
The #metoo movement, throughout its transformations in popular consciousness, has successfully raised the public’s awareness to the prevalence of sexual violence in today’s culture. A little over a year following the explosion of the hashtag on social media, society has seen the fall of media titans like Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood darlings like Kevin Spacey. I would argue that #metoo can provide the catalyst for political and social will to be used to reform the aid and development sector, and, in my opinion, it’s imperative that we seize the opportunity before it passes us by.
Where do we go from here?
We can to begin by closing the accountability gap. Not only have humanitarian and development workers not been held accountable by their own organisations, but the organisations themselves are held to very little account by the international community. This is not to say that aid organisations have done nothing in the wake of the initial Oxfam scandal. Oxfam has committed to implementing stronger vetting at the recruitment stage for senior staff and has created a whistle blowing hotline. The UN also has a strict code of conduct which includes a zero tolerance policy on sexual abuse and exploitation, and a new “Speak Up” hotline has been implemented. But, call me pessimistic; I can’t really see these actions as being enough.
Evidence has shown that only a fraction of victims of sexual assault come forward about their experiences, and while #metoo has begun to empower more women to come forward, I would propose that rather than putting the impetus for action on the victims, attention could be shifted to the perpetrators. Greater transparency between organisations on the history of accusations against staff members would be a step forward in accountability. Furthermore, while the rhetoric of “zero tolerance” has been around for decades, action mustfollow. It is imperative that allegations are investigated, and perpetrators held to account.
It is at this juncture that these factors come together: the need for accountability, the imperative to address the institutionalized nature of sexual misconduct in humanitarian aid, and the political will that has emerged from #metoo.
We need to pull this together, and essentially put our money where our proverbial mouth is. Turn the rhetoric of zero tolerance and the commitment to protecting victims and prosecuting perpetrators into funding for research grants to investigate best practices and policies to address these issues. We need to create independent organisations to investigate reports of misconduct to eradicate the potential for further cover-ups. All the statistics in this post regarding misconduct by aid organisations were provided by the organisations themselves, leaving inherent and significant bias in our available data. If we are to move forward and rebuild trust in the humanitarian and development sector we need to shift accountability from internal to external mechanisms. Because ultimately, without major alterations, and the application of political will to the issue of sexual exploitation, the failure of #metoo to enact meaningful change in aid and development will become just another footnote in history.
[1]NATO peacekeepers were deployed in Bosnia in 1995, and in Kosovo in 1999 in response to the ethnic Yugoslav wars of the 1990s
