In 2018, sexual misconduct scandals in the aid industry prompted significant efforts to address the problem. Despite this, media reports of extensive abuse cast doubt that real progress is being made. Some isolated cases are inevitable, given that the roots of sexual violence run deep in all societies. Increased reports are not necessarily a cause for concern. As awareness is raised, reports will increase; they are a sign of progress, at least in the interim.
However, cases of systemic abuse — scandals involving multiple agencies, perpetrators, and victims, where the abuse is an open secret or where complainants have tried and failed to get organizations to act — are a red flag. These strongly suggest that far from under-reporting by victims, the real problem is under-action by organizations.
Conflicting interests
This failure to act contrasts with the commitments made by many agencies to being survivor-centered and prioritizing survivors’ choices, wishes, rights, dignity, safety, security, and confidentiality.
Much thought has also gone into how this can be turned into concrete measures, for example, through enabling safe reporting, listening to survivors, providing them with support — medical, psycho-social, financial, etc. — conducting prompt and sensitive investigations, and holding perpetrators and others who fail to act accountable.
But in practice, little is happening to put survivors first.
Few organizations are prepared to confront the reality of what taking a survivor-centered approach means. Uppermost is the question of resources — how to pay for the measures needed to support victims, a particularly critical question at a time of cuts in aid. Associated with this is the question of who should pay.
The default mode for many when it comes to sexual exploitation and abuse ... is to fear for their own funding, reputation, and mission. But this issue is not about saving individual agencies; it is about the greater good.
—Citizens may well ask why public funds should be used to redress the harm caused by an organization’s failure to manage its personnel, without any reckoning either for the perpetrator or the agency.
Being survivor-centered and accountable as an organization are intrinsically linked, and therein lies the uncomfortable contradiction: Being more survivor-centered means being less organization-centered.
Of course, organizations need to balance survivors’ interests with other legitimate rights, obligations, and interests. For instance, there are the rights of survivors and complainants versus the rights of the accused to a fair hearing, or the duty to protect other at-risk groups versus the wish of a survivor to not report.
But the scandals that make headlines invariably involve organizations putting illegitimate considerations first, prioritizing their own interests over justice to victims.
The default mode for many when it comes to sexual exploitation and abuse, or SEA, is to fear for their own funding, reputation, and mission. But this issue is not about saving individual agencies; it is about the greater good. Aid resources need to be diverted to organizations that are making the best efforts to tackle SEA.
The way forward
The only meaningful way to take a survivor-centered approach is by removing the conflict of interest that lies at the heart of an organization’s ability to respond. This is a lesson already learned by better-regulated sectors around the world that ensure misconduct cases are handled by those without vested interests.
Calls for independent oversight of sexual misconduct and violence in aid have been made as far back as 2002. It is an abnegation of responsibility by the aid sector to leave victims to their fates, only responding when forced to do so by the extremely rare attention of the global media. But efforts over the years to take a more systematic approach and bring about external sector-wide regulation have always been met with strong institutional resistance.
The absence of a collective mechanism with sufficient leverage and clout to hold large international organizations to account inevitably leads to a splintered and inadequate response. It falls on each organization in the aid supply chain to handle cases professionally.
After 3 years of #AidToo, the focus has shifted inward — but is that enough?
Training and policies to address sexual misconduct have improved in response to the #AidToo movement. Yet a look at the investigative process indicates that gaps still exist in ensuring the process puts the needs of victims first.
This requires donors to exercise responsibility for overseeing cases arising in the programs they are funding, such as providing channels for reporting backed by protection for complainants. Implementing organizations must likewise ensure that cases are handled impartially throughout the complaints, investigation, and decision-making processes — this includes being willing to open up their systems to the scrutiny of organizations further up the supply chain.
Enforcement of standards is the only way to create deterrents, change culture and behavior, and genuinely align survivors’ and organizations’ interests. Within organizations, this entails rooting out not only perpetrators but also managers and leaders that bury reports of abuse.
Within the aid system, it requires holding all organizations in the supply chain to account when an incident occurs, from the local civil society organization at the bottom through to the donor government at the top.
A victim-centered approach to SEA is not a matter of lip service or tweaking interventions here or there. It is a fundamental strategy shift, which takes the interests of organizations out of the equation and puts the empowerment of affected communities at its heart. This approach informs people of their rights, listens to their complaints, investigates them promptly, and then also holds perpetrators, managers, and organizations to account.
Is the fragmented aid system driven by organizational and political self-interest ready for a survivor-centered approach?
Update, May 26, 2021: This piece has been updated with more details about balancing survivors’ interests with the duty to protect at-risk groups.
About the author
Asmita Naik
Asmita Naik has been an independent consultant since 2002, carrying out assignments across the globe on a wide range of issues related to human rights, protection, aid policy, and management. Prior to this, she worked for United Nations agencies in Geneva. Asmita has been a long-standing advocate for victims of sexual exploitation and abuse by aid workers. She co-authored a 2002 report on the sexual exploitation of refugee children by aid workers and peacekeepers in West Africa, which led to global policy on this issue for the first time.
