AID WORKERS VIOLATED ‘BASIC HUMAN DECENCY’: LEADER
LONDON Haiti’s president condemned the British charity Oxfam on Tuesday for a sexual misconduct scandal, describing the alleged misbehaviour of aid workers handling earthquake recovery efforts as a violation of basic human decency.
The comments from Haitian President Jovenel Moise add to the condemnation the anti-poverty charity has received since the Times of London revealed last week some Oxfam employees paid for sex while working in Haiti among people devastated by the 2010 earthquake.
“There is nothing more shameful than a sexual predator using the veil of catastrophe as a means to exploit the vulnerable in their most defenceless moments,” Moise said Tuesday. “What transpired is a violation of basic human decency.”
Also Tuesday, Britain’s charity watchdog opened an inquiry into how Oxfam handled the allegations of sexual abuse in Haiti in 2011.
Documents provided by Oxfam have led to further questions and suggest that the charity might not have “fully and frankly disclosed material details about the allegations at the time,” the Charity Commission said.
In another blow to the Oxfam brand, prosecutors in Guatemala said Tuesday that they had detained Juan Alberto Fuentes Knight, above, the chairman of Oxfam International. He was the country’s former finance minister under ex-president Alvaro Colom, who was arrested on corruption allegations with much of his entire former cabinet.