New report on sex abuse by Oxfam aid staff
LONDON: British aid organisation Oxfam faced fresh pressure yesterday after a former senior member of staff said her concerns about “a culture of sexual abuse” involving aid workers in some of the organisation’s offices had been ignored.
Helen Evans, who was in charge of investigating allegations against staff members between 2012 and 2015, told Channel 4 television abuse cases she had heard of included a woman who had been coerced to have sex in exchange for aid.
Another involved an assault on a teenage volunteer by a staff member in a charity shop in Britain, she said.
A survey of staff in three countries including South Sudan showed 10% of staff had been sexually assaulted and others had witnessed or experienced rape or attempted rape by colleagues, she said.
Evans, who headed a “safeguarding” section responsible for protecting staff and the people Oxfam works with, spoke of frustration that her calls for more support for her team were not taken seriously.
“I felt that our failure to adequately resource was putting people at risk,” she said. “I struggle to understand why they didn’t respond immediately to that call for additional resources.”
One of the best-known international NGOs, with aid programmes running across the globe, Oxfam is under threat of losing its British government funding over the sexual misconduct allegations.
Asked about Evans’s allegations, Oxfam said her work had spurred the organisation into taking concrete steps to improve the way it deals with “safeguarding” issues.
“We regret we did not act on Helen’s concerns quicker and with more resources,” the statement said. “We have doubled the number of people to four in our dedicated safeguarding team and are in the process of recruiting two extra staff.”
The deputy head of Oxfam resigned on Monday over what she said was the British charity’s failure to adequately respond to past allegations of sexual misconduct by some of its staff in Haiti and Chad.
The scandal is escalating into a broader crisis for Britain’s aid sector by bolstering critics in the ruling Conservative Party who have argued that the government should reduce spending on aid in favour of domestic priorities.
Aid minister Penny Mordaunt threatened on Sunday to withdraw government funding from Oxfam unless it gave the full facts about events in Haiti.
After meeting Oxfam officials on Monday, Mordaunt said she had written to all British charities working overseas to demand “they step up and do more, so we have absolute assurance that the moral leadership, the systems, the culture and transparency that are needed”.