Oxfam's reckoning

Oxfam has long been one of the world’s best-known global development organizations. But in 2018, it was hit by a scandal from which it is still struggling to recover: the revelation that Oxfam workers, stationed in Haiti to help rebuild the country following a 2010 earthquake had engaged in sexual exploitation, including paying vulnerable women for sex, some of whom may have been underage. Rokeya Kabir remembers being unsurprised when she heard the news. The magnitude of the allegations made headlines as far away as Bangladesh, where Kabir runs Bangladesh Nari Progati Sangha. She remembers thinking similar reports could easily have come from any of the remote communities where her small NGO works alongside international organizations to battle the daily discrimination women face. Many organizations “have this history,” she said. “We have to strongly deal with it, whatever comes up,” including by demanding justice when violations occur. But she stops short of suggesting that more severe punishments, such as funding cuts, be exacted against organizations. “Stopped funding means that we are also suffering,” she said. The British government reached a different conclusion. In the wake of the revelations, Oxfam was forced to withdraw from bidding for public funding until the government was satisfied it could meet its “high standards.” Donations also temporarily tumbled, and Brexit introduced new economic uncertainties. Already backed into a financial corner by the time COVID-19 arrived, Oxfam announced in May 2020 it would be withdrawing from 18 countries and laying off almost a third of its program staff. At the same time, amid growing calls to “decolonize” aid, the charity was attempting to introduce the kind of structural reforms that would prove to organizations such as BNPS that it was not a risk to communities. In February, a Charity Commission inquiry applauded the organization’s progress, and the nonprofit was subsequently cleared to bid for government funding again. But less than two months later, new allegations emerged of sexual exploitation and abuse by Oxfam employees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The U.K. government resurrected its funding ban. It is another blow to the organization’s efforts to show the communities it works with that the charity — and the aid industry it is part of — are capable of change. While Oxfam has been thrust into the spotlight via a string of scandals, many international NGOs are quietly grappling with the same questions about their role in a changing development landscape. “What I suspect, though, is that few people … see the link between power and privilege, women’s subordination and oppression, exploitation of poor women, abuses [of] all kinds of rights.” --— Hope Chigudu, former board member, Oxfam South Africa A brief history Oxfam today is unrecognizable from its founding in England nearly 80 years ago as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief. The small coalition demanded an end to the blockade creating starvation conditions for civilians in Axis-occupied Greece during World War II. From those early efforts, Oxfam grew to embrace a mission of poverty eradication. Buttressed by the support of its ubiquitous charity shops, its leaders assumed more activist stances as they layered on additional programs. The group developed a reputation for its willingness to challenge authority, where other INGOs might shy away. In the late 1990s, as the U.K. government and other donors began to pour money into fighting global poverty, Oxfam was a ready partner. Its rapid growth coincided with a period of internationalization. In 1995, Oxfam’s amorphous confederation of independent organizations was united under the umbrella of Oxfam International, which currently has 21 members. The secretariat organizes the affiliates around a common strategic plan while overseeing a budget that reached roughly €1 billion by the 2018-19 fiscal year. As it grew, Oxfam positioned itself at the vanguard of progressive shifts in global development, including efforts to decolonize the sector. That culminated in former Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanyima’s 2016 announcement that the charity was moving its global headquarters to Nairobi, Kenya. “Oxfam has decided that its global Secretariat should sit nearer to the people that we're working with to fight the injustice of poverty,” she wrote. “The fact is the world is changing and I believe it is necessary for NGOs like Oxfam to change.” The charity emerged from this period transformed but also reliant on partners and stretched beyond its capacity for internal oversight, as the investigations into the abuses in Haiti would reveal. Scandal strikes In July 2011, whistleblowers told Oxfam’s Oxford headquarters that staff members in Haiti had engaged in sexual exploitation and abuse. The subsequent internal investigation resulted in the dismissal or resignation of seven people, including the Haiti country director, for allegations ranging from abusing, and bullying staffers to bringing sex workers onto Oxfam property. Seven years later, that investigation would be leaked to The Times newspaper in London. That in turn would prompt a Charity Commission inquiry, which would find that during Oxfam’s internal investigation, the “risk to and impact on the victims appeared to take second place and was not taken seriously enough.” Instead, the priority was protecting Oxfam’s reputation, the inquiry concluded. It also zeroed in on significant gaps in the nonprofit’s policies and procedures for safeguarding. By that point, many aid professionals considered Oxfam’s safeguarding efforts, which had been strengthened since the events in Haiti, as some of the best in the sector — but that only served to underscore the aid industry’s broader failures, as a number of devastating allegations against other organizations also began to emerge. Amid the initial fallout, Oxfam opened itself to a period of intense scrutiny. It submitted not only to the Charity Commission review, which focused on Oxfam GB, but created its own Independent Commission on Sexual Misconduct, Accountability and Culture Change to consider the breadth of Oxfam International’s activities. In total, Oxfam committed to implement and address 100 actions and recommendations. By February of this year, the Charity Commission was applauding Oxfam’s “significant strides over the past two years or so on its safeguarding journey,” including developing a more comprehensive training policy and shoring up the capacity of its internal safeguarding team to quickly respond to allegations. Those efforts continue, according to Clifford Isabelle, global safeguarding director at Oxfam GB. “We’re constantly developing new materials, new ways of engaging,” he said. “We’re trying to do more work with the communities we work in to build better trust and understanding.” Just the beginning Yet the allegations from DRC that emerged just weeks after the Charity Commission agreed to end its strict supervision of Oxfam raised questions about whether any efforts will be enough to prevent abuse and exploitation. In a recent op-ed for The New Humanitarian, Danny Sriskandarajah, the recently installed Oxfam GB chief executive, argued that while incidents of abuse are shocking, the risk of exploitation is inevitable “where there are huge disparities in power.” Oxfam began an investigation into DRC allegations in November 2020, and dismissed three staff members over the matter in June — although whistleblowers have raised concerns about how long the process took, and allege that similar complaints about the organization’s Iraq program have been ignored. “There can be some frustration in terms of how long things take,” Oxfam’s Isabelle said. “But there’s always a reason for it,” which often cannot be revealed publicly in order to protect a survivor. In the midst of these revelations, the charity lost the right to bid for U.K. funding yet again. Oxfam and its partners are now waiting to see if there will be any additional fallout. A Charity Commission spokesperson told Devex they are “actively liaising with the charity on its investigations … and have been receiving regular updates and assurances on the steps it is taking.” Chris Willis Pickup, an expert on charity law at the firm Taylor Vinters who once worked at the commission, said it is unlikely the body will take more intrusive action. “The commission will want to leave Oxfam’s trustees to deal with this,” he told Devex, particularly with criticisms of its earlier handling of the charity already circulating, some arguing that the commission went too far in making an example of Oxfam. “They’ll likely suggest it can be looked at as a follow up of the previous work and they don’t need a new inquiry,” Willis Pickup said. A decision about when or if funding is restored is a different matter, though, dependent on the political whims of the government. Though Oxfam has already been forced to adjust to functioning without money from the U.K. government, observers said the ban is still a blow to the organization’s future stability, public image, and staff morale. The renewed funding ban, in particular, seems excessive to Maggie Black, author of the charity’s official history. Though she is not condoning what happened in DRC, she said the organization is already grappling with improving its ability to prevent and respond to these incidents. But it has regularly drawn outsized scrutiny, the result, she believes, of its criticism of the institutions and people it accuses of profiting from deepening global inequality. “It’s always been a controversial organization. Controversy was stamped in its genes,” she said. “But they’ve tried everything to put themselves honestly on the table so that people can see who they are, what they are, how they’re operating.” That comes in contrast to many of the organizations named as part of #AidToo revelations, few of which have faced recriminations on the same scale. In the words of Andrew Purkis, a former chair of ActionAid UK and former board member of the Charity Commission, “Oxfam have taken a mighty hit on behalf of all of us who were no more, and in many cases less, aware and well equipped than Oxfam in the dimension of safeguarding.” Reducing the conversation to responses to individual incidents and punishments is misguided, Willis Pickup suggested, particularly as the repeated allegations of abuses in Congo, involving at least seven other organizations, reveal an industry-wide crisis. “Oxfam has always been a thought leader in this area,” he said, and could be in a position to pivot the conversation toward “what are the cultural behaviors, incentives, and power structures that need to be in place to make it less likely that these kinds of abuses happen again because it would be countercultural, not just because there’s a policy against it.” “At the core of aid is this idea that we are helping. But with our help comes whatever the hell it comes with. If that means it comes with predatory behavior, we don’t want to examine that too closely. So we end up with this cycle that never stops.” --— Angela Bruce-Raeburn, former senior policy adviser, Oxfam America That is exactly what Oxfam is trying to do, Oxfam’s Isabelle said, both with the reforms they have already introduced and more that are on the way. “Crisis creates compliance,” he said, creating a situation where the priority is, “What do we need to do to say we’re on the right path? It creates a tick box culture. What we are doing now is how do we embed safeguarding as an identity of who we are as an organization. For example, how programs are designed and set up.” Power and privilege At the end of 2020, in her first public announcement, new Oxfam International Executive Director Gabriela Bucher launched the charity’s global strategic framework for 2020-2030. In it, the charity pledged to “adopt a feminist approach” in all its work and to improve diversity within its leadership. Already, Oxfam International has been piloting a reparations program for survivors. Whether the additional policies and frameworks signal an organization undergoing a fundamental transformation, Hope Chigudu is not sure. A member of the board of directors of Oxfam South Africa until earlier this year, Chigudu said the Haiti allegations triggered a reckoning within the organization. “What I suspect, though, is that few people … see the link between power and privilege, women’s subordination and oppression, exploitation of poor women, abuses [of] all kinds of rights, social and religious fundamentalism,” she told Devex. “Or they choose not to see it.” To Angela Bruce-Raeburn, Oxfam’s response continues to just “tinker at the margins.” Bruce-Raeburn worked for Oxfam America as a senior policy adviser for the humanitarian response in Haiti during the period when the abuse took place. The exploitation, she said, was a horrific extension of the imbalance inherent to many organizations in the development and humanitarian sectors. “At the core of aid is this idea that we are helping,” she said. “But with our help comes whatever the hell it comes with. If that means it comes with predatory behavior, we don’t want to examine that too closely. So we end up with this cycle that never stops.” She is not certain that cycle can ever be interrupted, raising questions about the future of INGOs and their role in development that she said the industry is unwilling to grapple with. At one end of that debate is Shaista Aziz, a veteran of the aid sector and one of the founders of NGO Safe Space, a response to #AidToo. She believes the sector is incapable of escaping its links to “systems of oppression,” including colonialism. Instead of reforms, she called for “a blueprint of what they [INGOs] will be doing to phase themselves out.” At the very least, to many observers, the focus on shoring up safeguarding strategies, while important, is also insufficient to change how power is conceived and wielded — a view endorsed by the U.K. Parliament’s International Development Committee in a January report. In the aftermath of Haiti, Bruce-Raeburn said there was an opportunity to reorient how organizations across the sector approach the communities where they work. “We would have to stop talking about aid as this benevolent sector,” she said, and focus on “what it means to be working with vulnerable people and build around that.” That would necessitate a much more fundamental shift within charities than she is seeing, including elevating people from marginalized groups into leadership positions and prioritizing building ties to communities. It also means holding the individuals who perpetrated those wrongs to account, said Shodona Kettle, chair of the Haiti Support Group, even in situations where it may be safer to a survivor not to report the incident to local authorities. “Allowing people to resign and then moving on, that doesn’t solve the issue,” she said. “Those local voices need to be listened to about how best to reconcile with the past and present and how to really ensure there is reparation and justice for crimes that are being committed against very vulnerable people.” Until that happens, she said local organizations like Kabir’s BNPS or Haitian groups will always feel like they are introducing a risk to their communities when they partner with international charities. “Nobody wants to be abandoned,” she said. “But they need to be safe.”