In February 2015, residents of Gilgil, a small town halfway between Naivasha and Nakuru in Kenya’s scenic Rift Valley – which was once known for its “Happy Valley” set – were stunned to learn that Simon Harris, a respected middle-aged British charity worker who had been living in the town since the 1990s, had been sentenced to jail for sexually abusing street children. A court in Birmingham in the UK had sentenced Harris to 17 years in prison for indecent sexual assault and for possessing indecent images of children.
According to an article by Nation reporter Pauline Kairu, few people in Gilgil suspected Harris of being a paedophile because he had gained a reputation as “the kind mzungu social worker who crusaded for the education of the less privileged”. This is also probably why the townspeople did not question his motives when he took street children to his house for “a warm bath” and a “hot meal”.
Two of the street children interviewed by the Nation reporter said that nights in Harris’ house “usually featured naked boys wrapped in towels, smoking bhang, cigarettes and binging on alcoholic beverages.” These binges almost always ended with Harris sexually abusing the boys. “After the bath, he would smell you and tell you ever so cheerfully, ‘You smell so good, I could eat you,” recalled Dom (not his real name). Many of the boys endured the abuse because “not coming to his house meant sleeping in town on a veranda, cold and hungry”. The judge who presided over Harris’ case stated that his victims had been degraded and used and that “the mental scars will almost certainly never heal”.
This shocking case forced the UK government to screen British nationals seeking to work in Kenya and elsewhere, especially in fields that give them easy access to children (such as teaching and charity work), and to prevent those who have been implicated in the sexual abuse of children in the UK from obtaining jobs abroad. (The UK is one of the few governments that has taken active steps to prevent child sexual abuse and exploitation by its nationals living outside the country.)
According to an article by Nation reporter Pauline Kairu, few people in Gilgil suspected Harris of being a paedophile because he had gained a reputation as “the kind mzungu social worker who crusaded for the education of the less privileged”. This is also probably why the townspeople did not question his motives when he took street children to his house for “a warm bath” and a “hot meal”.
Until the rise of the #MeToo movement – spurred by sexual harassment charges against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein – and revelations this year that senior Oxfam staff based in Haiti had sexually exploited local women and girls, the issue of sexual harassment, abuse and exploitation was not taken seriously by the humanitarian/aid industry. Now that the Oxfam scandal has become so huge, other aid organisations have also been forced to address the issue.
However, while international humanitarian NGOs, such as Oxfam, have been forced to examine practices that allow sexual harassment, abuse and exploitation to flourish within their organisations, the United Nations has been reluctant to even admit to such practices. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has reiterated the world body’s “zero tolerance” for sexual abuse, but has not ordered any of the UN’s agencies to conduct reviews on how they handle such cases, nor has he promised to bring the culprits to book.
“Boys will be boys”
The sexual abuse of children and women by UN peacekeepers has been reported in several countries recovering from civil war or natural disaster but hardly any of the perpetrators have been brought to justice either by their own countries or by the UN. Andrew MacLeod, a former UN official who now advocates for stiff penalties for aid workers implicated in the rape of women and children through his organisation Hear Their Cries, estimates that there have been over 60,000 rapes committed by UN personnel, including peacekeepers, in the last decade and that the organisation harbours some 3,000 paedophiles. (These numbers, however, are hard to verify as the UN does not compile such statistics, and even if does come across such cases, it is not likely to make them public.)
A report published by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in 2007 admitted that “the dangerous combination of thousands of relatively well-paid young men posted overseas in environments where the rule of law and other societal constraints are often absent…has allowed the sexual abuse and/or exploitation of local populations”. Tina Tinde, an international aid worker from Norway, told France 24 recently that often cases of rape or sexual exploitation by peacekeepers are overlooked on the pretext that “boys will be boys”.
The UN says it does not have the mandate to arrest or prosecute errant peacekeepers and that such cases should be referred to the countries that provide the peacekeepers. But even this principle is not adhered to. One of the most disturbing cases to emerge recently was that of Anders Kompass, the director of field operations at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who in 2014 was suspended after he informed the French government about the sexual abuse of children by French peacekeepers in the Central African Republic. Kompass endured months of frustration and eventually resigned from the UN, “disappointed and full of sadness” as the UN’s senior managers continued to blame him for tarnishing the organisation’s reputation, instead of addressing the issue and providing the victims with assistance. Narrating his experience to IRIN News, Kompass said that he had seen a lot of horror and brutality during his career at the UN but reading about “an eight-year-old boy describing in detail his sexual abuse by the peacekeepers meant to protect him is the kind of account I wish I’d never had to read.” He said that his experience had strengthened his conviction that UN staffers who act ethically will inevitably suffer negative consequences.
Andrew MacLeod, a former UN official who now advocates for stiff penalties for aid workers implicated in the rape of women and children, estimates that there have been over 60,000 rapes committed by UN personnel in the last decade and that the organisation harbours some 3,000 paedophiles.
Lori Handrahan, who once served as a gender expert at the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, says that when she reported a “food-for-sex” scandal at a refugee camp on the Chad-Darfur border, she was told by a senior UNHCR official to shut up. When she refused to do so, and especially after her story about how female refugees in the camp were being sexually exploited was published, she was warned that she would never work for UNHCR again.
In most countries where there are UN peacekeeping missions, the vast majority of the refugee or internally displaced populations comprise women and children – the most vulnerable group in any society. These are the people who are most likely to be sexually abused or exploited. The internally displaced boys in the Central African Republic who were sexually abused by the French peacekeepers were often given food or money in exchange for sexual favours. These kinds of “transactional” sexual relationships thrive in impoverished or war-torn regions. A Save the Children report on Liberia, for instance, showed that many Liberian girls believed that they had to have sex with UN or NGO staff before they could be given food. Naomi Tulay-Solanke, who runs an NGO in Liberia called Community Healthcare Initiative, says she is not surprised by revelations of sexual abuse and exploitation by aid workers. “Aid workers have been in my country for decades. This kind of thing happens everyday,” she told Bright magazine.
People working for aid/humanitarian organisations sexually exploit people because they can. The Oxfam director in Haiti, Roland van Hauwermeiren, used his privileged position to procure sex from women whose lives had been devastated by the January 2010 earthquake. Women and children in poor countries destroyed by war or other disasters are vulnerable to sexual abuse or exploitation because they are more likely than men to have direct contact with humanitarian organisations – they are usually the ones who stand in line for rations and other types of aid during a crisis and who are often targeted for medical and other interventions aimed at women and children. For this reason, as Macleod points out, humanitarian organisations attract a disproportionate number of “predatory paedophiles” or opportunistic rapists.
A culture of misogyny and racism
In an email interview, Handrahan, who is also the author of Epidemic: America’s Trade in Child Rape, a book that looks at the impact of child abuse and pornography, told me that sexual abuse and exploitation of vulnerable populations by UN officials and aid workers continues because “the humanitarian sector, as whole, has cultivated a culture of misogyny and racism against employees and beneficiary populations” and “is still, largely, about white men enjoying power”. She says that white men in powerful positions within humanitarian organisations view sexual exploitation as their “right” or a “perk” that comes with working in hardship areas. She believes that this culture will only change if more women are hired in senior positions within these organisations.
Of course, not all aid workers implicated in sexual abuse or exploitation have been white men; an Associated Press investigation in Haiti found that the majority of UN peacekeepers involved in a child sex ring were from Sri Lanka. And many of the perpetrators of rape and child abuse in other troubled parts of the world have been from the so-called developing world. The thing to remember is who holds the power in the donor-recipient or peacekeeper-affected population relationship – and who holds the guns.
In an email interview, Handrahan, who is also the author of Epidemic: America’s Trade in Child Rape, told me that sexual abuse and exploitation of vulnerable populations by UN officials and aid workers continues because “the humanitarian sector, as whole, has cultivated a culture of misogyny and racism against employees and beneficiary populations” and “is still, largely, about white men enjoying power”.
We must also accept that the aid creates dependency, which distorts the donor-recipient or saviour-victim relationship. As Firoze Manji wrote in the January 2015 edition of the New African, “for saviours to exist, there must be those in need of saving – saviours require victims – and turning other humans into victims is therefore a fundamental requirement of the saviour complex.” Saviours, he says, “cannot thrive where people retake control of their destinies, assert their dignity and humanity, create the structures for self-determination, organise to make collective decisions, take pride in their own countries, and seek neither aid nor charity.”
Many proponents of aid argue that by highlighting cases of sexual exploitation and abuse within the aid industry, it becomes much more difficult for humanitarian organisations to carry out their work because these revelations undermine the important work they do in alleviating human suffering.
On the other hand, those who question the benefits of aid argue that it is just another form of colonialism that is instrumental in perpetuating poverty and underdevelopment, especially in Africa. As Maina Mwangi, a Kenyan investment banker put it, aid, by its very nature, is a “blunt instrument” as it removes responsibility for wealth creation and development from Africa’s leadership to donors, which enables the African political class to “eat” with impunity. Similarly, the Tanzanian scholar Issa Shivji has referred to aid a form of neocolonialism that wrests power and responsibility from African states and their leaders and into the hands of NGOs and foreign donors. Indeed, even the British diplomat Robert Cooper admitted once that Western aid is “soft power” – an essential component of extending Europe’s influence in countries it once colonised, or “a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values”. Donor agencies and the charities and humanitarian organisations that they fund are the instruments through which such “soft power” is exerted.
Like colonialism, foreign aid has the net effect of disempowering and infantilising “the natives” and their leaders. Nowhere is this more evident than in the international emergency relief and humanitarian sectors, which usually gain prominence during famines and other disasters. When an international humanitarian organisation flies in to distribute food to starving people or to provide tents to people fleeing a civil war, it allows these people’s governments to abdicate their responsibility towards their own citizens. As Alex de Waal notes, “The process of internationalisation is the key to the appropriation of power by international institutions and the retreat from domestic accountability.”
The “internationalisation” of famine relief started in earnest during the Biafran famine in Nigeria in 1968. International relief agencies began mushrooming then and by 1984, when the musician Bob Geldof initiated his Band Aid, famine relief had virtually become an industry. Today famine relief is a big industry. The UN’s appeal for donations during the 2011 famine in Somalia, for example, managed to raise $1.4 billion within just one month of the appeal. A lot of this money went right back to where it came from. Much of the food aid for Somalia was purchased from the United States and was transported on US-flagged ships. (A large proportion of this food was alleged to have been stolen by local militias, a claim that was refuted the UN’s World Food Programme, but which suggested that there was a thriving aid-based black market economy in Somalia.)
What needs to be done
Thanks to the #MeToo movement and the Times newspaper’s revelations about Oxfam staff members’ peccadillos in Haiti, there is now greater interest in addressing the issues of sexual harassment within aid organisations and sexual abuse and exploitation by aid workers. The UK’s international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt, has threatened to withdraw funding from aid organisations that do not take sexual harassment or abuse seriously. The UK is also among those countries whose police and anti-crime authorities actively pursue and prosecute UK citizens who sexually abuse children abroad, as was in the Harris case.
Like colonialism, foreign aid has the net effect of disempowering and infantilising “the natives” and their leaders. Nowhere is this more evident than in the international emergency relief and humanitarian sectors, which usually gain prominence during famines and other disasters.
However, such harassment, exploitation and abuse is likely to continue at that bastion of impunity, the United Nations. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has promised to look into the matter and has even instituted a “confidential helpline” for victims of sexual harassment. However, I can confidently say from personal experience that this policy is unlikely to yield results, especially if the person being accused of harassment or other types of wrongdoing is a senior UN official. Any UN staff member who reports the misconduct of a senior UN official usually faces swift retaliation.
More importantly, as long as UN officials enjoy immunity from prosecution and as long as the UN’s internal justice system continues to fail whistleblowers, such abuse is likely to continue. (The UN Charter accords UN officials immunity from prosecution – a privilege that is not even accorded to ambassadors, who can be tried in their own countries, if not in the country where they are stationed, if they are implicated in illegal or criminal activities. Guterres’ office recently tweeted that UN staff members’ immunity would be waived in child abuse cases, but we are yet to see if this will materialise.)
The UN has to overhaul its internal justice system and put in place external, independent mechanisms that are more transparent and accountable – and which do not victimise whistleblowers. As Peter Gallo, a former investigator at the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services, says, nothing will change until there is real accountability at the UN “and that will never happen unless and until there is a truly independent and separate agency established that is not part of the UN secretariat but reports directly – and separately – to member states.”
Current and former female UN employees have reported a flawed internal justice and grievance system that is stacked against the victims. One of these women told the UK’s Guardian newspaper that she was raped by a senior UN staff member while working in a remote location but did not obtain justice despite medical evidence and witness testimonies.
More importantly, as long as UN officials enjoy immunity from prosecution and as long as the UN’s internal justice system continues to fail whistleblowers, such abuse is likely to continue.
When in 2005 the UN established an Ethics Office, UN staff members believed that they could report criminal or unethical behaviour confidentially without being punished. However, the UN Ethics Office has proved to be a channel through which wrongdoing is covered up. Very few UN staff members who have approached this office for help have obtained justice; on the contrary, many have been forced to resign or have been fired.
Meanwhile, the perpetrators are given unlimited freedom to do as they please. In 2015, a UN official who was accused of sexual harassment was even allowed to interview the woman who made the compliant against him. (This happened to me as well when I worked at the UN’s city agency, UN-Habitat. The panel selected to interview me consisted almost entirely of proxies of people I had accused of wrongdoing. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.) As Handrahan asks: “How can the UN end suffering of vulnerable populations when female employees navigate hostile environments just by showing up for work, let alone when they attempt to raise issues of sexual abuse and exploitation by UN staff?”
The UN’s highly hierarchical, male-dominated and secretive environment also makes it difficult for women to report sexual harassment or other kinds of wrongdoing. One internal survey at UNAIDS found that about 40 women had experienced sexual harassment but only two had reported it. The fear of losing their jobs or enduring other forms of retaliation prevent women from coming forward, especially if the accused is a senior official, and particularly if he has the authority to renew – or not renew – their contracts. Meanwhile, few, if any, of these sexual predators lose their jobs or are demoted or reprimanded for their actions.
Furthermore, those who are tasked with reporting sexual abuse and other kinds of wrongdoing do not do so because they believe that their reports will reflect badly on their careers and impact their upward mobility within the organisation. Craig Sanders, the UNHCR official who told Handrahan to keep quiet, feared that exposure of the “food-for-sex” scandal could “ruin his career”. (It didn’t; Sanders is now the Deputy Director in the Division of Programme Support and Management at UNHCR’s headquarters in Geneva.)
A disgruntled American aid worker in Kosovo told David Reiff, the author of A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, that UN officials believe that a critical report on the UN or on its activities will jeopardise their careers. “And that’s much more unlikely if your reports to UN headquarters say everything is fine than if they are critical. It may not be fine; in fact, it may all be going to hell in a handbasket. But if you value your career chances, you’d better have an awfully good reason to ring the alarm, and above all be damn sure the bad news isn’t going to piss off…major donors, and in turn make your bosses furious with you,” she explained.
The UN’s highly hierarchical, male-dominated and secretive environment also makes it difficult for women to report sexual harassment or other kinds of wrongdoing. One internal survey at UNAIDS found that about 40 women had experienced sexual harassment but only two had reported it.
Thanks to the Oxfam scandal, more mainstream media organisations have started to take aid agencies, including the UN, to task, which was not so before, probably because critics of the aid industry are usually associated with conservative right-wing groups. Even the so-called liberal media have realised that sexual abuse of vulnerable populations by aid workers is an offence that they can no longer ignore, and that this kind of abuse actually undermines the good work that many of these organisations claim to be doing. More exposure in the mainstream media of sexual abuse and exploitation by UN employees and aid workers might just force these agencies to take the issue more seriously.
Many proposals have been made to curb these crimes, including stiffer penalties for the perpetrators and stronger screening systems to prevent paedophiles from getting jobs in the aid sector. But given the stifling bureaucracy at the UN and at most international aid organisations – and their propensity to cover up scandals that make them look bad – perhaps the most effective strategy would be for donors to withdraw funding from any organisation where sexual harassment, exploitation or abuse has been reported and has not been dealt with adequately. There is no bigger incentive in the aid industry to change things than the threat of dwindling resources due to donor disgust.
