A cancer in our system. That’s how Ban Ki-Moon, the former secretary-general of the United Nations, described sexual abuse and exploitation in the organization in 2015. His comments came after peacekeeping forces in the Central African Republic were implicated in the rape of a 12-year-old girl — but nearly a decade later, new data shows that cancer is still deep in the humanitarian sector’s veins.
CHS Alliance, a humanitarian network focused on accountability, has found that 1 in 5 survivors of sexual abuse, exploitation, and harassment at the hands of aid workers was under the age of 18, and a quarter of all perpetrators held management positions.
The data is a result of a CHS pilot program, which asked two dozen international, local, and private sector organizations to track incidents of sexual abuse committed by aid workers between October 2022 and September 2023. Together, those organizations reported 133 incidents against both aid recipients and staff members throughout the year.