Pootietang scandal at Oxfam...
After Oxfam's Sex Scandal: Shocking Revelations, A Scramble For Solutions
March 16, 2018 - The Oxfam sex scandal was not a one-time news story. The report on sexual misconduct by Oxfam workers in Haiti in 2011 made headlines last month. Since then, a number of other aid groups have come clean about similar problems — and revealed cases that victimized staffers as well.
After Oxfam's Sex Scandal: Shocking Revelations, A Scramble For Solutions
March 16, 2018 - The Oxfam sex scandal was not a one-time news story. The report on sexual misconduct by Oxfam workers in Haiti in 2011 made headlines last month. Since then, a number of other aid groups have come clean about similar problems — and revealed cases that victimized staffers as well.
This past week, U2 frontman Bono said he was "furious" over allegations against his ONE advocacy group — including an accusation that a female employee was demoted after refusing to have sex with a Tanzanian member of parliament. Meanwhile, the aid world is scrambling to put solutions in place. Here are some of the latest developments.
The cost for Oxfam Great Britain
Oxfam continues to deal with the fallout of the Oxfam Great Britain sex scandal. A spokesperson said on March 9 that Oxfam, which has more than 9,000 staff in more than 90 countries, investigated 42 allegations of sexual misconduct in 2017. Late last month, the Haitian government suspended Oxfam Great Britain for two months while it investigates how the charity handled the local case. Oxfam Great Britain's future government funding is also at risk. "Oxfam has agreed to withdraw from bidding for any new UK Government funding until DFID is satisfied that they can meet the high standards we expect of our partners," Britain's international development secretary Penny Mordaunt said in a statement. In the last financial year, Oxfam GB received $44 million in funding from the UK's Department for International Development.
Revelations and resignations
But the Oxfam scandal is now just one in an ever-growing list. The allegations of sexual abuse by humanitarian workers and U.N. peacekeepers include inappropriate conduct among staffers as well as toward local populations. But it's the latter scandals that are raising the deepest sense of outrage. "When we go to work in these countries where there is no infrastructure and we're supposed to be there to help facilitate, the rule of law and order and instead we're taking advantage of that vacuum — that to me is the absolute worst offense," Dina Francesca Haynes, who has worked for the U.N. refugee agency in Croatia and for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, told NPR. Last month, 46 U.N. peacekeepers were recalled from their post in Wau, South Sudan, after allegations that some of them had engaged in transactional sex. "This is a clear breach of the U.N. and UNMISS Code of Conduct which prohibits sexual relationships with vulnerable individuals, including all beneficiaries of assistance," the U.N. Mission in South Sudan said in a statement.
A U.N. Population Fund report published in November 2017 is getting renewed attention. It's titled "Voices from Syria 2018" and includes descriptions of the sexual exploitation that some women and girls in Syria said they faced during aid distributions. During focus group discussions, some participants said aid workers would "make sexual advances on women and girls in exchange for goods or services necessary for survival." As a result, some women and girls said they would only go to distribution sites with a chaperone, the report states. The aid organization Plan International said on Feb. 21 that it had six confirmed cases of sexual abuse and exploitation of children by staff or associates from July 2016 to June 2017, as well as nine incidents of sexual harassment or sexual misconduct by staff involving adults. In a statement, the group said it reports details of criminal instances to law enforcement agencies but would not reveal details to the public "due to the sensitive nature of the information."
In the cases involving children, the organization says it "linked victims and families with local support networks including but not limited to medical and psychosocial support." The Red Cross director said in a statement Feb. 23 that since 2015, a total of 21 Red Cross employees have either been dismissed for paying for "sexual services" or resigned while an internal inquiry was in progress. High-profile resignations are also in the news. Last month, Justin Forsyth resigned from his role as UNICEF's deputy executive director after allegations arose of inappropriate behavior while he was working for Save the Children, which said in a statement: "In 2011 and 2015, concerns were raised about inappropriate behavior and comments" by Forsyth. Three female employees made complaints, the organization noted. Also in February, Brendan Cox resigned from two charities he helped to start. One of them, the Jo Cox Foundation, announced on Feb. 17 that it had accepted his resignation. On Feb. 18, Save the Children said in a statement that Cox was accused of inappropriate behavior while working for that group in 2015. At the time, Cox was suspended and a disciplinary process began, but he resigned before it was completed, the organization said. Cox has also been accused of assaulting a woman at Harvard University in 2015. He tweeted an apology.
Fixing the problem
